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THE MEANING OF HISTORY 

AND OTHER HISTORICAL PIECES 



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THE 



MEANING OF HISTORY 



AND OTHER HISTORICAL PIECES 



BY 

FREDERIC HARRISON 



^3&*-7j 



MACMILLAN AND CO. 

AND LONDON 



All rights reserved 



THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON 



Copyright, 1894, 
By MACMILLAN AND CO. 



Ml 



J. S. dishing & Co. — Berwick & Smith. 
Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 



NOTE. 

This volume contains a collection of essays designed to 
stimulate the systematic study of general history. They 
are (with two exceptions) the permanent and condensed 
form of historical lectures given in a series of courses 
at various places of education. The writer has been con- 
stantly occupied with the teaching of history since 1862 ; 
and the first two chapters of this book were the intro- 
duction to a course of lectures given in that year to a 
London audience. They were printed at the time, but 
the issue has been long exhausted. The third chapter 
(which is in effect a Choice of Books of History) and also 
the fifth chapter (a synthetic survey of the Thirteenth 
Century) were inaugural lectures given in the New Schools 
at Oxford to the summer vacation students. The other 
chapters are based on lectures given by the writer at 
various times at Newton Hall, Toynbee Hall, the London 
Institution, and other literary and scientific institutions. 
Several of these chapters (about half the present volume 
in bulk) have already appeared in the Fortnightly Review 



VI NOTE. 

and in one or two other periodicals. They have in all 
cases been carefully revised and partly rewritten ; and 
the author has to express to the Editors and Proprietors 
of these organs his grateful thanks for the courtesy 
with which he has been enabled to use them. 



CONTENTS. 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. The Use of History i 

II. The Connection of History 24 

- III. Some Great Books of History 77 

IV. The History Schools (an Oxford Dialogue) . . .118 
V. A Survey of the Thirteenth Century . . . .139 

VI. What the Revolution of 1789 did 172 

VII. France in 1789 and 1889 207 

VIII. The City: Ancient — Medleval — Modern — Ideal . . 222 

(I) The Ancient City 224 

(II) The Medieval City 232 

(111) The Modern City 239 

(iv) The Ideal City 244 

IX. Rome Revisited . 252 

X. Impressions of Athens 284 

XI. Constantinople as an Historic City 309 

(1) Byzantine History 309 

(II) Topographical Conditions 319 

(III) Antiquities of Constantinople .... 330 
XII. The Problem of Constantinople . . - . . . . 341 

(1) The Historical Problem 342 

(11) The Political Problem 360 

XIII. Paris as an Historic City 368 

vii 



viii 



CONTENTS. 



CHAP. 

. XIV. The Transformation of Paris 
XV. The Transformation of London 
(i) London in 1887 
(n) London in 1894 
XVI. The Sacredness of Ancient Buildings 
XVII. Pal^ographic Purism 



PAGE 

395 
412 
412 
43° 
437 
45 6 



THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE USE OF HISTORY. 

What is the use of historical knowledge? Is an ac- 
quaintance with the events, the men, the ideas of the past, 
of any real use to us in these days — has it any practical 
bearing upon happiness and conduct in life ? 

Two very different answers may be given to this ques- 
tion. The Gradgrinds and the Jack Cades assure us that 
there is no use at all. We are, they would say with Bacon, 
the mature age of the world ; with us lies the gathered 
wisdom of ages. To waste our time in studying exploded 
fallacies, in reproducing worn-out forms of society, or in 
recalling men who were only conspicuous because they 
lived amidst a crowd of ignorant or benighted barbarians, 
is to wander from the path of progress, and to injure and 
not to improve our understandings. 

On the other hand, the commonplace of literary gossip 
declares that history has fifty different uses. It is amus- 
ing to hear what curious things they did in bygone times. 
Then, again, it is very instructive as a study of character ; 
we see in history the working of the human mind and will. 
Besides, it is necessary to avoid the blunders they com- 
mitted in past days : there we collect a store of moral 
examples, and of political maxims ; we learn to watch the 
signs of the times, and to be prepared for situations when- 

A I 



THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 



ever they return. And it cannot be doubted, they add, 
that it is a branch of knowledge, and all knowledge is good! 
To know history, they conclude, is to be well-informed, is 
to be familiar with some of the finest examples of elegant 
and brilliant writing-. 

Between the two, those who tell us plainly that history 
is of no use, and those who tell us vaguely that history 
is of fifty uses, there is not much to choose. We must 
thoroughly disagree with them both, and of the two we 
would rather deal with the former. Their opposition, at 
any rate, is concentrated into a single point, and may be 
met by a single and a direct answer. To them we may 
say, Are you consistent ? Do you not in practice follow 
another course ? In rejecting all connection with the facts 
and ideas of the past, are you not cutting the ground from 
under your own feet ? Assume that you are an active poli- 
tician and a staunch friend of the conservative or liberal 
party. What are the traditional principles of a party but 
a fraction, small, no doubt, but a sensible fraction of his- 
tory ? You believe in the cause of progress. Yet what is 
the cause of progress but the extension of that civilisation 
of that change for the better which we have all witnessed 
or have learned to recognise as an established fact > Your 
voice, if you are a politician and a democrat, is on the 
side of freedom. Well, but do you never appeal to Magna 
Charta, to the Bill of Rights, to the Reform Acts to 
American Independence, or the French Revolution t ' Or 
you are an imperialist, and you will suffer no outrage on 
the good name of England. You are ready to cover the 
seas with armaments to uphold the national greatness 
But what ,s the high name of England if it is not the 
memory of a 1 the deeds by which, in peace or war, on ea 

;' :: ; ;;;f and has heki her ° wn am °^ **t « 



THE USE OF HISTORY. 



Nor is it true that we show no honour to the men of 
the past, are not guided by their ideas, and do not dwell 
upon their lives, their work, and their characters. The 
most turbulent revolutionary that ever lived, the most 
bitter hater of the past, finds many to admire. It may 
be Cromwell, it may be Rousseau, or Voltaire, it may be 
Robert Owen, but some such leader each will have ; his 
memory he will revere, his influence he will admit, his 
principles he will contend for. Thus it will be in every 
sphere of active life. No serious politician can fail to 
recognise that, however strongly he repudiates antiquity, 
and rebels against the tyranny of custom, still he himself 
only acts freely and consistently when he is following the 
path trodden by earlier leaders, and is working with the 
current of the principles in which he throws himself, and 
in which he has confidence. For him, then, it is not true 
that he rejects all common purpose with what has gone 
before. It is a question only of selection and of degree. 
To some he clings, the rest he rejects. Some history he 
does study," and finds in it both profit and enjoyment. 

Suppose such a man to be interested in any study what- 
ever, either in promoting general education, or eager to 
acquire knowledge for himself. He will find, at every step 
he takes, that he is appealing to the authority of the past, 
is using the ideas of former ages, and carrying out princi- 
ples established by ancient, but not forgotten thinkers. If 
he studies geometry he will find that the first text-book 
put into his hand was written by a Greek two thousand 
years ago. If he takes up a grammar, he will be only 
repeating rules taught by Roman schoolmasters and pro- 
fessors. & Or is he interested in art ? He will find the 
same thing in a far greater degree. He goes to the British 
Museum, and he walks into a building which is a good imi- 
tation of a Greek temple. He goes to the Houses of Parlia- 



4 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

ment to hear a debate, and he enters a building which 
is a bad imitation of a mediaeval town-hall. 'Or, again, we 
know that he reads his Shakespeare and Milton ; feels 
respect for the opinions of Bacon or of Hume, or Adam 
Smith. Such a man, the moment he takes a warm interest 
in anything^^in politics, in education, in science, in art, 
or in social improvement — the moment that his intelli- 
gence is kindled, and his mind begins to work — that 
moment he is striving to throw himself into the stream 
of some previous human efforts, to identify himself with 
others, and to try to understand and to follow the path of 
future progress which has been traced out for him by the 
leaders of his own party or school. Therefore, such a man 
is not consistent when he says that history is of no use to 
him. He does direct his action by what he believes to be 
the course laid out before him ; he does follow the guid- 
ance of certain teachers whom he respects. 

We have then only to ask him on what grounds he 
rests his selection ; why he chooses some and rejects all 
others ; how he knows for certain that no other corner 
of the great field of history will reward the care of the 
ploughman, or bring forth good seed. In spite of him- 
self, he will find himself surrounded in every act and 
thought of life by a power which is too strong for him. 
If he chooses simply to stagnate, he may,- perhaps, dis- 
pense with any actual reference to the past ; but the 
moment he begins to act, to live, or to think, he must use 
the materials presented to him, and, so far as he is a 
member of a civilised community, so far as he is an 
Englishman, so far as he is a rational man, he can as little 
free himself from the influence of former generations as 
he can free himself from his personal identity ; unlearn all 
that he has learnt ; cease to be what his previous life has 
made him, and blot out of his memory all recollection 
whatever. 



THE USE OF HISTORY. 5 

Let us suppose for a moment that any set of men could 
succeed in sweeping away from them all the influences of 
past ages, and everything that they had not themselves dis- 
covered or produced. Suppose that all knowledge of the 
gradual steps of civilisation, of the slow process of perfect- 
ing the arts of life and the natural sciences, were blotted 
out ; suppose all memory of the efforts and struggles of 
earlier generations, and of the deeds of great men, were 
gone ; all the landmarks of history ; all that has distin- 
guished each country, race, or city in past times from 
others ; all notion of what man had done, or could do ; 
of his many failures, of his successes, of his hopes ; sup- 
pose for a moment all the books, all the traditions, all the 
buildings of past ages to vanish off" the face of the earth, 
and with them the institutions of society, all political 
forms, all principles of politics, all systems of thought, all 
daily customs, all familiar arts ; suppose the most deep-rooted 
and most sacred of all our institutions gone ; suppose that 
the family and home, property, and justice were strange 
ideas without meaning ; that all the customs which sur- 
round us each from birth to death were blotted out ; 
suppose a race of men whose minds, by a paralytic stroke 
of fate, had suddenly been deadened to every recollection, 
to whom the whole world was new, — can we imagine a 
condition of such utter helplessness, confusion, and misery ? 

Such a race might retain their old powers of mind and of 
activity, nay, both might be increased tenfold, and yet it 
would not profit them. Can we conceive such a race act- 
ing together, living together, for one hour ? " They would 
have everything to create. Would any two agree to adopt 
the same custom, and could they live without any ? They 
would have all the arts, all the sciences to reconstruct 
anew ; and even their tenfold intellect would not help them 
there. With minds of the highest order it would be im- 



6 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

possible to think, for the world would present one vast 
chaos; even with the most amazing powers of activity, 
they would fall back exhausted from the task of reconstruct- 
ing, reproducing everything around them. Had they the 
wisest teachers or the highest social or moral purposes, 
they would all be lost and wasted in an interminable 
strife, and continual difference ; for family, town, property, 
society, country, nay, language itself, would be things 
which each would be left to create for himself, and each 
would create in a different manner. It would realise, 
indeed, the old fable of the tower of Babel ; and the pride 
of self would culminate in confusion and dispersion. A 
race with ten times the intellect, twenty times the powers, 
and fifty times the virtues of any race that ever lived on 
earth would end, within a generation, in a state of hopeless 
barbarism ; the earth would return to the days of primeval 
forests and swamps, and man descend almost to the level 
of the monkey and the beaver. 

Now, if this be true, if we are so deeply indebted and so 
indissolubly bound to preceding ages, if all our hopes of 
the future depend on a sound understanding of the past, 
we cannot fancy any knowledge more important than the 
knowledge of the way in which this civilisation has been 
built up. If the destiny of our race, and the daily action 
of each of us, are so completely directed by it, the useful 
existence of each depends much upon a right estimate of 
that which has so constant an influence over him ; will be 
advanced as he works with the working of that civilisation, 
above him, and around him ; will be checked as he opposes 
it ; it depends upon this, that he mistakes none of the 
elements that go to make up that civilisation as a whole, 
and sees them in their due relation and harmony. 

This brings us to that second class of objectors ; those 
who, far from denying the interest of the events of the 



THE USE OF HISTORY. 7 

past, far from seeing no use at all in their study, are only 
too ready in discovering a multitude of reasons for it, and 
at seeing in it a variety of incongruous purposes. If they 
suppose that it furnishes us with parallels when similar 
events occur, the answer is, that similar events never do 
and never can occur in history. The history of man 
offers one unbroken chain of constant change, in which 
no single situation is ever reproduced. The story of the 
world is played out like a drama in many acts and scenes, 
not like successive games of chess, in which the pieces 
meet, combat, and manoeuvre for a time, and then the 
board is cleared for another trial, and they are replaced in 
their original positions. Political maxims drawn crudely 
from history may do more harm than good. You may 
justify anything by a pointed example in history. It will 
show you instances of triumphant tyranny and triumphant 
tyrannicide. You may find in it excuses for any act or 
any system. What is true of one country is wholly untrue 
of another. What led to a certain result in one age, leads 
to a wholly opposite result in another. 

Then as to character, if the sole object of studying 
history is to see in it the workings of the human heart, 
that is far better studied in the fictitious creations of the 
great masters of character — in Shakespeare, in Moliere, 
in Fielding, and Scott. Macbeth and Richard are as true 
to nature as any name in history, and give us an impres- 
sion of desperate ambition more vivid than the tale of any 
despot in ancient or modern times. Besides, if we read 
history only to find in it picturesque incident or subtle 
shades of character, we run as much chance of stumbling: 
on the worthless and the curious as the noble and the 
great. A Hamlet is a study in interest perhaps exceeding 
all others in fiction or in fact, but we shall hardly find that 
Hamlets have stamped their trace very deep in the history 



THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 



of mankind. There are few lives in all human story more 
romantic than that of Alcibiades, and none more base. 
Some minds find fascination in the Popish plots of Titus 
Oates, where the interest centres round a dastardly ruffian. 
And the bullies, the fops, the cut-throats, and the Jezebels 
who crowded the courts of the Stuarts and the Georges, 
have been consigned to permanent infamy in libraries of 
learned and of brilliant works. 

Brilliant and ingenious writing has been the bane of 
history ; it has degraded its purpose, and perverted many 
of its uses. Histories have been written which are little 
but minute pictures of scoundrelism and folly triumphant. 
Wretches, who if alive now would be consigned to the 
gallows or the hulks, have only to take, as it is said, a 
place in history, and generations after generations 'of 
learned men will pour over their lives, collect their letters, 
their portraits, or their books, search out every fact 
in their lives with prurient inquisitiveness, and chronicle 
their rascalities in twenty volumes. Such stories, some 
may say, have a human interest. So has the Newgate 
Calendar a human interest of a certain kind. Brilliant 
writing is a most delusive guide. In search of an effec- 
tive subject for a telling picture, men have wandered into 
strange and dismal haunts. We none of us choose our 
friends on such a plan. Why, then, should we choose thus 
the friends round whom our recollections are to centre ? 
We none of us wish to be intimate with a man simply 
because he is a picturesque-looking villain, nor do we bring 
to our firesides men who have the reputation of being the 
loudest braggarts or keenest sharpers of their time. 

Let us pass by untouched these memoirs of the un- 
memorable — these lives of those who never can be said 
to have lived. Pass them all : these riotings, intrigues, 
and affectations of worthless men and worthless ages' 



THE USE OF HISTORY. g 

Better to know nothing of the past than to know only its 
follies, though set forth in eloquent language and with 
attractive anecdote. It does not profit to know the names 
of all the kings that ever lived, and the catalogue of all 
their whims and vices, and a minute list of their par- 
ticular weaknesses, with all their fools, buffoons, mistresses, 
and valets. Again, some odd incident becomes the subject 
of the labour of lives, and fills volume after volume of in- 
genious trifling. Some wretched little squabble is ex- 
humed, unimportant in itself, unimportant for the persons 
that were engaged in it, trivial in its results. Lives are 
spent in raking up old letters to show why or how some 
parasite like Sir T. Overbury was murdered, or to unravel 
some plot about a maid of honour, or a diamond necklace, 
or some conspiracy to turn out a minister or to detect some 
court impostor. There are plenty of things to find out, or, 
if people are afflicted with a morbid curiosity, there are 
Chinese puzzles or chess problems left for them to solve, 
without ransacking the public records and libraries to dis- 
cover which out of a nameless crowd was the most unmiti- 
gated scoundrel, or who it is that must have the credit of 
being the author of some peculiarly venomous or filthy pam- 
phlet. Why need we have six immense volumes to prove 
to the world that you have found the villain, and ask them 
to read all about him, and explain in brilliant language how 
some deed of darkness or some deed of folly really was done ? 
And they call this history. This serving up in spiced 
dishes of the clean and the unclean, the wholesome and 
the noxious ; this plunging down into the charnel-house of 
the great graveyard of the past, and stirring up the decay- 
ing carcases of the outcasts and malefactors of the race. 
No good can come of such work : without plan, without 
purpose, without breadth of view, and without method ; with 
nothing but a vague desire to amuse, and a morbid craving 



IO THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

for novelty. If there is one common purpose running 
through the whole history of the past, if that history is 
the story of man's growth in dignity, and power, and 
goodness, if the gathered knowledge and the gathered 
conscience of past ages does control us, support us, inspire 
us, then is this commemorating these parasites and off- 
scourings of the human race worse than pedantry or folly. 
It is filling us with an unnatural contempt for the great- 
ness of the past — nay, it is committing towards our 
spiritual forefathers the same crime which Ham committed 
against his father Noah. It is a kind of sacrilege to the 
memory of the great men to whom we owe all we prize, if 
we waste our lives in poring over the acts of the puny 
creatures who only encumbered their path. 

Men on the battle-field or in their study, by the labour 
of their brains or of their hands, have given us what we 
have, and made us what we are ; a noble army who have 
done battle with barbarism and the powers of nature, 
martyrs often to their duty ; yet we are often invited to 
turn with indifference from the story of their long march 
and many victories, to find amusement amidst the very 
camp-followers and sutlers who hang upon their rear If 
history has any lessons, any unity, any plan, let us turn to 
it for this. Let this be our test of what is history and 
what is not, that it teaches us something of the advance 
of human progress, that it tells us of some of those mighty 
spirits who have left their mark on all time, that it shows 
us the nations of the earth woven together in one purpose, 
or is lit up with those great ideas and those great purposes 
which have kindled the conscience of mankind 

Why is knowledge of any kind useful ? It is certainly 
not true that a knowledge of facts, merely as facts, is 
desirable Facts are infinite, and it is not the millionth 
part of them that is worth knowing. What some people 



THE USE OF HISTORY. II 

call the pure love of truth often means only a pure love of 
intellectual fussiness. A statement may be true, and yet 
wholly worthless. It cannot be all facts which are the 
subject of knowledge. For instance, a man might learn 
by heart the Post-Office Directory, and a very remarkable 
mental exercise it would be ; but he would hardly venture 
to call himself a well-informed man. No ; we want the 
facts only which add to our power, or will enable us to act. 
They only give us knowledge — they only are a part of 
education. For instance, we begin the study of mathe- 
matics ; of algebra, or geometry. We hardly expect to 
turn it to practical account like another Hudibras, who 
could 'tell the clock by algebra'; but we do not find 
Euclid's geometry help us to take the shortest cut to our 
own house. Our object is to know something of the 
simplest principles which underlie all the sciences : to 
understand practically what mathematical demonstration 
means : to bring home to our minds the conception of 
scientific axioms. 

Again, we study some of the physical laws of nature — 
plain facts about gravitation, or heat, or light. What we 
want is to be able to know something of what our modern 
philosophers are talking about. We want to know why 
Faraday is a great teacher ; to know what it is which seems 
to affect all nature equally ; which brings us down heavily 
upon the earth if we stumble, and keeps the planets in their 
orbits. We want to understand what are laws of nature. 
We take up such pursuits as botany or geology ; but then, 
again, not in order to discover a new medicine, or a gold- 
field, or a coal-mine. No, we want to know something of 
the mystery around us. We see intelligible structure, con- 
sistent unity, and common laws in the earth on which we 
live, with the view, I presume, of feeling more at home in 
it, of becoming more attached to it, of living in it more 



12 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

happily. Some study physiology. We do not expect to 
discover the elixir of life, like an eminent novelist, nor do 
we expect to dispense with the aid of the surgeon. We 
want to get a glimpse of that marvellous framework of the 
human form, some notion of the laws of its existence, some 
idea of the powers which affect it, which depress or develop 
it, some knowledge of the relation of the thinking and 
feeling process and the thinking and feeling organ. We 
seek to know something of the influences to which all 
human nature is subject, to be able to understand what 
people mean when they tell us about laws of health, or 
laws of life, or laws of thought. We want to be in a posi- 
tion to decide for ourselves as to the trustworthiness of 
men upon whose judgment we depend for bodily existence. 
Now, in this list of the subjects of a rational education 
something is wanting. It is the play of Hamlet without 
the Prince of Denmark : — 

' The proper study of mankind is man.' 

Whilst Man is wanting, all the rest remains vague, and 
incomplete, and aimless. Mathematics would indeed be a 
jumble of figures if it ended in itself. But the moment 
we learn the influence which some great discovery has had 
on the destinies of man ; the moment we note how all 
human thought was lighted up when Galileo said that the 
sun, and not the earth, was the centre of our world ; the 
moment we feel that the demonstrations of Euclid are 
things in which all human minds must agree — indeed, 
are almost the only things in which all do agree, — that 
moment the science has a meaning, and a clue, and a plan. 
It had none so long as it was disconnected from the history 
and the destiny of man — the past and the future. It is 
the same with every other science. What would be the 
meaning of laws of nature, unless by them man could act 



THE USE OF HISTORY. 1 3 

on nature ? What would be the use of knowing the laws 
of health, unless we supposed that a sounder knowledge 
of them would ameliorate the condition of men ? What, 
indeed, is the use of the improvement of the mind ? It 
is far from obvious that mere exercise of the intellectual 
faculties alone is a good. A nation of Hamlets (to take a 
popular misconception of that character) would be more 
truly miserable, perhaps more truly despicable, than a 
nation of Bushmen. By a cultivated mind, a mental train- 
ing, a sound education, we mean a state of mind by which 
we shall become more clear of our condition, of our powers, 
of our duties towards our fellows, of our true happiness, 
by which we may make ourselves better citizens and better 
men — more civilised, in short. The preceding studies 
have been but a preparation. They have been only to 
strengthen the mind, and give it material for the true work 
of education — the inculcation of human duty. 

All knowledge is imperfect, we may almost say meaning- 
less, unless it tends to give us sounder notions of our 
human and social interests. What we need are clear 
principles about the moral nature of man as a social being ; 
about the elements of human society ; about the nature 
and capacities of the understanding. We want landmarks 
to guide us in our search after worthy guides, or true 
principles for social or political action. Human nature is 
unlike inorganic nature in this, that its varieties are greater, 
and that it shows continual change. The earth rolls round 
the sun in the same orbit now as in infinite ages past ; 
but man moves forward in a variable line of progress. 
Age after age develops into new phases. It is a study of 
life, of growth, of variety. One generation shows one 
faculty of human nature in a striking degree ; the next 
exhibits a different power. All, it is true, leave their mark 
upon all succeeding generations, and civilisation flows on 



14 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

like a vast river, gathering up the waters of its tributary 
streams. Hence it is that civilisation, being not a fixed or 
lifeless thing, cannot be studied as a fixed or lifeless sub- 
ject. We can see it only in its movement and its growth. 
Except for eclipses, some conjunctions of planets, and 
minor changes, one year is as good as another to the 
astronomer ; but it is not so to the political observer. He 
must watch successions, and a wide field, and compare a 
long series of events. Hence it is that in all political, all 
social, all human questions whatever, history is the main 
resource of the inquirer. 

To know what is most really natural to man as a social 
being, man must be looked at as he appears in a succes- 
sion of ages, and in very various conditions. To learn the 
strength or scope of all his capacities together, he must 
be judged in most successive periods in which each in turn 
was best brought out. Let no one suppose that he will 
find all the human institutions and faculties equally well 
developed, and all in their due proportion and order, by 
simply looking at the state of civilisation now actually 
around us. It is not a monstrous assumption that this 
world of to-day, so full of misery and discontent, strife 
and despair, ringing with cries of pain and cries for aid, 
can really embody forth to us complete and harmonious 
man ? Are there no faculties within him yet fettered, no 
good instincts stifled, no high yearnings marred? Have 
we in this year reached the pinnacle of human perfection, 
lost nothing that we once had, gained all that we can gain ? 
Surely, by the hopes within us, No ! But what is missing- 
may often be seen in the history of the past. There, in 
the long struggle of man upwards, we may watch Humanity 
in various moods, and see some now forgotten power, 
capacity, or art yet destined to good service in the future. 
One by one we may light on the missing links in the chain 



THE USE OF HISTORY. 1 5 

which connects all races and all ages in one, or gather up 
the broken threads that must yet be woven into the com- 
plex fabric of life. 

There is another side on which history is still more 
necessary as a guide to consistent and rational action. 
We need to know not merely what the essential qualities 
of civilisation and of our social nature really are ; but we 
require to know the general course in which they are tend- 
ing. The more closely we look at it, the more distinctly 
we see that progress moves in a clear and definite path ; 
the development of man is not a casual or arbitrary motion : 
it moves in a regular and consistent plan. Each part is 
unfolded in due order — the whole expanding like a single 
plant. More and more steadily we see each age working 
out the gifts of the last and transmitting its labours to the 
next. More and more certain is our sense of being- strong: 
only as we wisely use the materials and follow in the track 
provided by the efforts of mankind. Everything proves 
how completely that influence surrounds us. Take our 
material existence alone. The earth's surface has been 
made, as we know it, mainly by man. It would be unin- 
habitable by numbers but for the long labours of those who 
cleared its primeval forests, drained its swamps, first tilled 
its rank soil. All the inventions on which we depend for 
existence, the instruments we use, were slowly worked out 
by the necessities of man in the childhood of the race. 
We can only modify or add to these. We could not 
discard all existing machines and construct an entirely 
new set of industrial implements. 

Take our political existence. There again we are equally 
confined in limits. Our country as a political whole has 
been formed for us by a long series of wars, struggles, and 
common efforts. We could not refashion England, or 
divide it anew, if we tried for a century. Our great towns, 



1 6 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

our great roads, the local administrations of our counties, 
were sketched out for us by the Romans fifteen centuries 
since. Could we undo it if we tried, and make London a 
country village, or turn Birmingham into the metropolis ? 
Some people think they could abolish some great institu- 
tion, such as the House of Lords ; but few reformers in 
this country have proposed to abolish the entire British 
Constitution. For centuries we endured an archaic law of 
real property. Such as it was, it was made for us by our 
feudal ancestors misreading Roman texts. Turn which- 
ever way we will, we shall find our political systems, laws, 
and administrations to have been provided for us. 

The same holds good even more strongly in all moral 
and intellectual questions. Are we to suppose that whilst 
our daily life, our industry, our laws, our customs, are con- 
trolled by the traditions and materials of the past, our 
thoughts, our habits of mind, our beliefs, our moral sense, 
our ideas of right and wrong, our hopes and aspirations, are 
not just as truly formed by the civilisation in which we 
have been reared ? We are indeed able to transform it, to 
develop it, and to give it new life and action ; but we can 
only do so as we understand it. Without this all efforts, 
reforms, and revolutions are in vain. A change is made, 
but a few years pass over, and all the old causes reappear. 
There was some unnoticed power which was not touched, 
and it returns in full force. Take an instance from our 
own history. Cromwell and his Ironsides, who made the 
great English Revolution, swept away Monarchy, and 
Church, and Peers, and thought they were gone forever. 
Their great chief dead, the old system returned like a 
tide, and ended in the orgies of Charles and James. The 
Catholic Church has been, as it is supposed, staggering in 
its last agonies now for many centuries. Luther believed 
he had crushed it. Long before his time it seemed 



THE USE OF HISTORY. \*J 

nothing but a lifeless mass of corruption. Pope after 
Pope has been driven into exile. Four or five times has 
the Church seemed utterly crushed. And yet here in this 
nineteenth century, it puts forth all its old pretensions, 
and covers its old territory. 

In the great French Revolution it seemed, for once, that 
all extant institutions had been swept away. That devour- 
ing fire seemed to have burnt the growth of ages to the 
very root. Yet a few years pass, and all reappear — 
Monarchy, Church, Peers, Jesuits, Empire, and Praetorian 
guards. Again and again they are overthrown. Again 
and again they rise in greater pomp and pride. They 
who, with courage, energy, and enthusiasm too seldom 
imitated, sixty years ago carried the Reform of Parliament 
and swept away with a strong hand abuse and privilege, 
believed that a new era was opening for their country. 
What would they think now ? When they abolished rot- 
ten boroughs, and test acts, and curtailed expenditure, 
little did they think that sixty years would find their 
descendants wrangling about Church Establishments, ap- 
pealing to the House of Lords as a bulwark of freedom, 
and spending ninety millions a year. The experience of 
every one who was ever engaged in any public movement 
whatever reminds him that every step made in advance 
seems too often wrung back from him by some silent and 
unnoticed power ; he has felt enthusiasm give way to 
despair, and hopes become nothing but recollections. 

What is this unseen power which seems to undo the 
best human efforts, as if it were some overbearing weight 
against which no man can long struggle ? What is this 
ever-acting force which seems to revive the dead, to re- 
store what we destroy, to renew forgotten watchwords, 
exploded fallacies, discredited doctrines, and condemned 
institutions ; against which enthusiasm, intellect, truth, 
B 



jg THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

high purpose, and self-devotion seem to beat themselves to 
death in vain ? It is the Past. It is the accumulated wills 
and works of all mankind around us and before us. It 
is civilisation. It is that power which to understand is 
strength, which to repudiate is weakness. Let us not 
think that there can be any real progress made which is 
not based on a sound knowledge of the living institutions 
and the active wants of mankind. If we can only act on 
nature so far as we know its laws, we can only influence 
society so far as we understand its elements and ways. 
Let us not delude ourselves into thinking that new prin- 
ciples of policy or social action can be created by them- 
selves or can reconstruct society about us. Those rough 
maxims, which we are wont to dignify by the name of 
principles, may be, after all, only crude formulas and 
phrases without life or power. Only when they have been 
tested, analysed, and compared with other phases of social 
life, can we be certain that they are immutable truths. 
Nothing but a thorough knowledge of the social system, 
based upon a regular study of its growth, can give us the 
power we require to affect it. For this end we need one 
thing above all — we need history, y 

It may be said — all this may be very useful for states- 
men, or philosophers, Or politicians ; but what is the use of 
this to the bulk of the people ? They are not engaged in 
solving political questions. The bulk of the people, if they 
are seeking to live the lives of rational and useful citizens, 
if they only wish to do their duty by their neighbours, are 
really and truly politicians. They are solving political 
problems, and are affecting society very deeply. A man 
does not need even to be a vestryman, he need not even 
have one out of the 500,000 votes for London, in order 
to exercise very great political influence. A man, pro- 
vided he lives like an honest, thoughtful, truth-speaking 



THE USE OF HISTORY. 19 

citizen, is a power in the state. He is helping to form 
that which rules the state, which rules statesmen, and is 
above kings, parliaments, or ministers. He is forming 
public opinion. It is on this, a public opinion, wise, 
thoughtful, and consistent, that the destinies of our coun- 
try rest, and not on acts of parliament, or movements, or 
institutions. 

It is sheer presumption to attempt to remodel existing 
institutions, without the least knowledge how they were 
formed, or whence they grew ; to deal with social questions 
without a thought how society arose ; to construct a social 
creed without an idea of fifty creeds which have risen and 
vanished before. Few men would, intentionally, attempt 
so much ; but many do it unconsciously. They think 
they are not statesmen, or teachers, or philosophers ; but, 
in one sense, they are. In all human affairs there is this 
peculiar quality. They are the work of the combined 
labours of many. No statesman or teacher can do any- 
thing alone. He must have the minds of those he is 
to guide prepared for him. They must concur, or he is 
powerless. In reality, he is but the expression of their 
united wills and thoughts. Hence it is, I say, that all men 
need, in some sense, the knowledge and the judgment of 
the statesman and the social teacher. Progress is but the 
result of our joint public opinion ; and for progress that 
opinion must be enlightened. ' He only destroys who can 
replace.' All other progress than this — one based on the 
union of many minds and purposes, and a true conception 
of the future and the past — is transitory and delusive. 
Those who defy this power, the man, the party, or the 
class who forget it, will be beating themselves in vain 
against a wall ; changing, but not improving ; moving, but 
not advancing ; rolling, as the poet says of a turbulent city, 
like a sick man on the restless bed of pain. 



20 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

The value of a knowledge of history being admitted, 
there follows the complicated problem of how to acquire 
it. There are oceans of facts, mountains of books. This 
is the question before us. It is possible to know some- 
thing of history without a pedantic erudition. Let a man 
ask himself always what he wants to know. Something 
of man's social nature ; something of the growth of civili- 
sation. He needs to understand something of the charac- 
ter of the great races and systems of mankind. Let him 
ask himself what the long ages of the early empires did for 
mankind; whether they established or taught anything; 
if fifty centuries of human skill, labour, and thought were 
wasted like an autumn leaf. Let him ask himself what 
the Greeks taught or discovered : why the Romans were 
a noble race, and how they printed their footmarks so 
deeply on the earth. Let him ask what was the original 
meaning and life of those great feudal institutions of 
chivalry and church, of which we see only the remnants. 
Let him ask what was the strength, the weakness, and the 
meaning of the great revolution of Cromwell, or the great 
revolution in France. A man may learn much true history, 
without any very ponderous books. Let him go to the 
museums and see the pictures, the statues, and buildings 
of Egyptian and Assyrian times, and try to learn what 
was the state of society under which men in the far East 
reached so high a pitch of industry, knowledge, and cul- 
ture, three thousand years before our savage ancestors 
had learned to use the plough. A man may go to one of 
our Gothic cathedrals, and, seeing there the stupendous 
grandeur of its outline, the exquisite grace of its design, 
the solemn expression upon the faces of its old carved 
or painted saints, kings, and priests, may ask himself if 
the men who built that could be utterly barbarous, false- 
hearted, and tyrannical ; or if the power which could bring 



THE USE OF HISTORY. 21 

out such noble qualities of the human mind and heart 
must not have left its trace upon mankind. 

It does not need many books to know something of the 
life of the past. A man who has mastered the lives in old 
Plutarch knows not a little of Greek and Roman history. 
A man who has caught the true spirit of the Middle Ages 
knows something of feudalism and chivalry. But is this 
enough ? Far from it. These desultory thoughts must be 
connected. These need to be combined into a whole, and 
combined and used for a purpose. Above all, we must 
look on history as a whole, trying to find what each age 
and race has contributed to the common stock, and how 
and why each followed in its place. Looked at separately, 
all is confusion and contradiction : looked at as a whole, a 
common purpose appears. The history of the human race 
is the history of a growth. It can no more be taken to 
pieces than the human frame can be taken to pieces. 
Who would think of making anything of the body without 
knowing whether it possessed a circulation, a nervous 
system, or a skeleton. History is a living whole. If one 
organ be removed, it is nothing but a lifeless mass. What 
we have to find in it is the relation and connection of the 
parts. We must learn how age develops into age, how 
country reacts upon country, how thought inspires action, 
and action modifies thought. 

Once conceive that all the greater periods of history 
have had a real and necessary part to fulfil in creating the 
whole, and we shall have done more to understand it than 
if we had studied some portion of it with a microscope. 
Once feel that all the parts are needed for the whole, and 
the difficulty of the mass of materials vanishes. We shall 
come to regard it as a composition or a work of art which 
cannot be broken up into fragments at pleasure. We 
should as soon think of dividing it as of taking a figure out 



22 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

of a great picture, or a passage out of a piece of music. 
We all know those noble choruses of Handel, such as that 
' Unto us a child is born,' and have heard the opening 
notes begin simple, subdued, and slow, until they are 
echoed back in deeper tones, choir answering to choir, 
voice joining in with voice, growing fuller and stronger 
with new and varying bursts of melody, until the whole 
stream of song swells into one vast tide of harmony, and 
rolls on abounding, wave upon wave in majestic exultation 
and power. Something like this complex harmony is seen 
in the gathering parts of human history, age taking up the 
falling notes from age, race joining with race in answering 
strain, until the separate parts are mingled in one, and 
pour on in one movement together. 

There is one mode in which history may be most easily, 
perhaps most usefully, approached. Let him who desires 
to find profit in it, begin by knowing something of the 
lives of great men. Not of those most talked about, not 
of names chosen at hazard ; but of the real great ones 
who can be shown to have left their mark upon distant 
ages. Know their lives, not merely as interesting studies 
of character, or as persons seen in a drama, but as they 
represent and influence their age. Not for themselves 
only must we know them, but as the expression and types 
of all that is noblest around them. Let us know those 
whom all men cannot fail to recognise as great — the 
Caesars, the Charlemagnes, the Alfreds, the Cromwells, 
great in themselves, but greater as the centre of the 
efforts of thousands. 

We have done much towards understanding the past 
when we have learned to value and to honour such men. 
It is almost better to know nothing of history than to 
know with the narrow coldness of a pedant a record which 
ought to fill us with emotion and x*everence. Our closest 



THE USE OF HISTORY. 23 

friends, our earliest teachers, our parents themselves, are 
not more truly our benefactors than they. To them we 
owe what we prize most — country, freedom, peace, knowl- 
edge, art, thought, and higher sense of right and wrong. 
What a tale of patience, courage, sacrifice, and martyrdom 
is the history of human progress ! It affects us as if we 
were reading in the diary of a parent the record of his 
struggles for his children. For us they toiled, endured, 
bled, and died ; that we by their labour might have rest, 
by their thoughts might know, by their death might live 
happily. For whom did these men work, if not for us ? 
Not for themselves, when they gave up peace, honour, life, 
reputation itself — as when the great French republican 
exclaimed, ' May my name be accursed, so that France be 
free ! ' not for themselves they worked, but for their 
cause, for their fellows, for us. Not that they might have 
fame, but that they might leave the world better than they 
found it. This supported Milton in his old age, blind, 
poor, and dishonoured, when he poured out his spirit in 
solitude, full of grace, tenderness, and hope, amidst the 
ruin of all he loved and the obscene triumph of all he 
despised. It supported Dante, the poet of Florence, when 
an outlaw and an exile he was cast off by friends and 
countrymen, and wandered about begging his bread from 
city to city, pondering the great thoughts which live 
throughout all Europe. This spirit, too, was in one, the 
noblest victim of the French Revolution, the philosopher 
Condorcet ; who, condemned, hunted to death, devoted 
the last few days of his life to serene thought of the past, 
and, whilst the pursuers were on his track, wrote in his 
hiding-place that noble sketch of the progress of the 
human race. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 

Let us now try to sketch the outline of this story, link 
century to century, continent to continent, and judge the 
share each has in the common work of civilisation. To 
do so, we must go back to ages long before records began. 
It is but of the latter and the shorter portion of the dura- 
tion of progress, that any record has been made or pre- 
served. Yet for a general view, sufficient materials of 
certain knowledge exist. If we write the biography of a 
man we do not begin with the year of his life in which his 
diary opens ; we seek to know his parentage, education, 
and early association. To understand him we must do so. 
So, too, the biography of mankind must not confine itself 
to the eras of chronological tables, and of recorded events. 
In all large instances the civilisation of an epoch or a 
people has a certain unity in it — their philosophy, their 
policy, their habits, and their religion must more or less 
accord, and all depend at last upon the special habit of 
their minds. It is this central form of belief which deter- 
mines all the rest. Separately no item which makes up 
their civilisation as a whole, can be long or seriously 
changed. It is what a man believes, which makes him act 
as he does. Thus shall we see that, as their reasoning 
powers develop, all else develops likewise ; their science, 
their art break up or take new forms ; their system of 
society expands ; their life, their morality, and their relig- 
ion gradually are dissolved and reconstructed. 

24 



THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 25 

Let us, then, place ourselves back in imagination at a 
period when the whole surface of the earth was quite un- 
like what it is now. Let us suppose it as it was after the 
last great geologic change — the greater portion of its area 
covered with primeval forests, vast swamps, dense jungles, 
moors, prairies, and arid deserts. We must not suppose 
that the earth had always the same face as now. Such as 
it is, it has been made by man ; the rich pasturages and 
open plains have all been created by his toil — even the 
grain, and fruits, and flowers that grow upon its soil have 
been made what they are by his care. Their originals 
were what we now should regard as small, valueless, in- 
sipid berries or weeds. As yet the now teeming valleys 
of the great rivers, such as the Nile, or the Euphrates, or 
the Po, were wildernesses or swamps. The rich meadows 
of our own island were marshes ; where its cornfields stand 
now, were trackless forests or salt fens. Such countries 
as Holland were swept over by every tide of the sea, and 
such countries as Switzerland, and Norway, and large parts 
of America, or Russia, were submerged beneath endless 
pine-woods. And through these forests and wastes ranged 
countless races of animals, many, doubtless, long extinct, 
in variety and numbers more than we can even conceive. 

Where in this terrible world was man ? Scanty in 
number, confined to a few favourable spots, dispersed, and 
alone, man sustained a precarious existence, not yet the 
lord of creation, inferior to many quadrupeds in strength, 
only just superior to them in mind — nothing but the first 
of the brutes. As are the lowest of all savages now, no 
doubt even lower, man once was. Conceive what Robinson 
Crusoe would have been had his island been a dense jungle 
overrun with savage beasts, without his gun, or his knife, 
or his knowledge, with nothing but his human hand and 
his human brain. Ages have indeed passed since then — 



2 6 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

at least some twenty thousand years — possibly twice or 
thrice twenty thousand. But they should not be quite for- 
gotten, and all recollection perish of that dark time when 
man waged a struggle for life or death with nature. Let 
us be just to those who fought that fight with the brutes, 
hunted down and exterminated step by step the races too 
dangerous to man, and cleared the ground of these mon- 
strous rivals. Every nation has its primeval heroes, whose 
hearts quailed not before the lion or the dragon : its Nim- 
rod, a mighty hunter before the Lord ; its Hercules, whose 
club smote the serpent Hydra ; its Odin, who slew mon- 
sters. The forests, moreover, had to be cleared. Step by 
step man won his way into the heart of those dark jungles ; 
slowly the rank vegetation was swept off, here and there a 
space was cleared, here and there a plain was formed which 
left a patch of habitable soil. 

Everywhere man began as a hunter, without implements, 
without clothing, without homes, perhaps without the use 
of fire. Man's supremacy over the brutes was first asserted 
when his mind taught him how to make the rude bow, or 
the flint knife, or to harden clay or wood by heat. But 
not only were all the arts and uses of life yet to be found, 
but all the human institutions had to be formed. As yet 
language, family, marriage, property, tribe, were not, or 
only were in germ. A few cries assisted by gesture, a 
casual association of the sexes, a dim trace of parentage 
or brotherhood, a joint tenure by those who dwelt together, 
were all that was. Language, as we know it, has been 
slowly built up, stage after stage, by the instinct of the 
entire race. Necessity led to new sounds, which use de- 
veloped ; sounds became words, words were worked into 
sentences, and half-brutish cries grew into intelligible 
speech. Our earliest teachers were those whose higher 
instincts first taught men to unite in permanent pairs, to 



THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 2? 

group the children of one home, to form into parties and 
companies, to clothe themselves, and put checks upon the 
violent passions. They who first drew savage man out of 
the life of unbridled instinct and brutal loneliness ; who 
founded the practices of personal decency and cleanliness ; 
who first taught men to be faithful and tender to the young 
and the old, the woman, and the mother ; who first brought 
these wild hunters together, and made them trust each 
other and their chief — these were the first great bene- 
factors of mankind ; this is the beginning of the history of 
the race. 

When such was the material and moral condition of 
man, what was his intellectual condition ? what were his 
knowledge, his worship, and his religion ? Turn to the 
earliest traditions of men, to the simple ideas of child- 
hood, and especially to the savage tribes we know, and 
we have the answer. Man's intellect was far feebler than 
his activity or his feelings. He knew nothing, he rested 
in the first imagination. He reasoned on nothing, he 
supposed everything. He looked upon nature, and saw 
it full of life, motion, and strength. He knew what 
struggles he had with it ; he felt it often crush him, he 
felt he could often mould it ; and he thought that all, 
brutes, plants, rivers, storms, forests, and mountains, were 
powers, living, feeling, and acting like himself. Do not 
the primeval legends, the fairy tales of all nations, show it 
to us ? Does not the child punish its doll, and the savage 
defy the thunder, and the horse start at a gnarled oak 
swaying its boughs like arms in the wind ? Man then 
looked out upon nature, and thought it a living thing — 
a simple belief which answered all questions. He knew 
nothing of matter, or elements, or laws. His celestial 
and his terrestrial philosophy was summed up in this — 
things act so because they choose. He never asked why 



28 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

the sun or moon rose and set. They were bright beings 
who walked their own paths when and as they pleased. 
He never thought why a volcano smoked, or a river over- 
flowed ; or thought only that the one was wroth and 
roared, and that the other had started in fury from his bed. 

And what was his religion ? What could it but be ? 
Affection for the fruits and flowers of the earth — dread 
and prostration before the terrible in nature — worship 
of the bright sun, or sheltering grove, or mountain — in 
a word, the adoration of nature, the untutored impulse 
towards the master powers around. As yet nothing was 
fixed, nothing common. Each worshipped in love or 
dread what most seized his fancy ; each family had its 
own fetishes ; each tribe its stones or mountains ; often it 
worshipped its own dead — friends who had begun a new 
existence : who appeared to them in dreams, and were 
thought to haunt the old familiar spots. Such was their 
religion, the unguided faith of childhood, exaggerating 
all the feelings and sympathies, stimulating love, and 
hatred, and movement, and destruction, but leaving every- 
thing vague, giving no fixity, no unity, no permanence. 
In such a condition, doubtless, man passed through many 
thousand years: tribe struggling with tribe in endless 
battles for their hunting grounds ; often, we may fear, 
devouring their captives ; without any fixed abode, or 
definite association, or material progress ; yet gradually 
forming the various arts and institutions of life, gradually 
learning the use of clothes, of metals, of implements, of 
speech — a race whose life depended solely upon the 
chase, whose only society was the tribe, whose religion 
was the worship of natural objects. 

In this first struggle with nature, man was not long 
quite alone. Slowly he won over to his side one or two 
of the higher animals. This wonderful victory assured 



THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 29 

his ultimate ascendancy. The dog was won from his 
wolf-like state to join and aid in the chase. The horse 
bowed his strength in generous submission to a master. 
We do not reflect enough upon the efforts that this cost. 
We are forgetful of the wonders of patience, gentleness, 
sympathy, sagacity, and nerve, which were required for 
the first domestication of animals. We may reflect upon 
the long centuries of care which were needed to change 
the very nature of these noble brutes, without whom we 
should indeed be helpless. By degrees the ox, the sheep, 
the goat, the hog, the camel, and the ass, with horse and 
dog, were reared by man, formed part of his simple 
family, and became the lower portion of the tribe. Their 
very natures, their external forms, were changed. Milk 
and its compounds formed the basis of food. The hun- 
ter's life became less precarious, less rambling, less 
violent In short, the second great stage of human exist- 
ence began, and pastoral life commenced. 

With the institution of pastoral — a modified form of 
nomad — life, a great advance was made in civilisation. 
Larger tribes could now collect, for there was now no 
lack of food ; tribes gathered into a horde ; something 
like society began. It had its leaders, its elders, perhaps 
its teachers, poets, and wise men. Men ceased to rove 
for ever. They stayed upon a favourable pasture for long 
periods together. Next, property — that is, instruments, 
valuables, and means of subsistence — began ; flocks and 
herds accumulated; men were no longer torn daily by 
the wants of hunger ; and leisure, repose, and peace were 
possible. The women were relieved from the crushing 
toil of the past. The old were no longer abandoned or 
neglected through want. Reflection, observation, thought 
began ; and with thought, religion. As life became more 
fixed, worship became less vague and more specific. 



30 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

Some fixed, great powers alone were adored, chiefly the 
host of heaven, the stars, the moon, and the great sun 
itself. Then some elder, freed from toil or war, meditat- 
ing on the world around him, as he watched the horde 
start forth at the rising of the sun, the animals awakening 
and nature opening beneath his rays, first came to think 
all nature moved at the will of that sun himself, per- 
haps even of some mysterious power of whom that sun 
was but the image. From this would rise a regular wor- 
ship common to the whole horde, uniting them together, 
explaining their course of life, stimulating their powers 
of thought. 

With this some kind of knowledge commenced. Their 
vast herds and flocks needed to be numbered, distin- 
guished, and separated. Arithmetic began ; the mode of 
counting, of adding and subtracting, was slowly worked 
out. The horde's course, also, must be directed by the 
seasons and the stars. Hence astronomy began. The 
course of the sun was steadily observed, the recurrence of 
the seasons noted. Slowly the first ideas of order, regu- 
larity, and permanence arose. The world was no longer a 
chaos of conflicting forces. The earth had its stated 
times, governed by the all-ruling sun. Now, too, the 
horde had a permanent existence. Its old men could 
remember the story of its wanderings and the deeds of its 
mighty ones, and would tell them to the young when the 
day was over. Poetry, narrative, and history had begun. 
Leisure brought the use of fresh implements. Metals 
were found and worked. The loom was invented ; the 
wheeled car came into use ; the art of the smith, the 
joiner, and the boat-builder. New arts required a sub- 
division of labour, and division of labour required orderly 
rule. Society had begun. A greater step was yet at 
hand. Around some sacred mountain or grave, in some 



THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 3t 

more favoured spot, where the horde would longest halt or 
often est return, some greater care to clear the ground, to 
protect the pasture, and to tend the plants was shown ; 
some patches of soil were scratched to grow some useful 
grains, some wild corn ears were cultivated into wheat, 
the earth began to be tilled. Man passed into the 
third great stage of material existence, and agriculture 
began. 

Agriculture once commenced, a new era was at hand. 
Now organised society was possible. We must regard 
this stage as the greatest effort towards progress ever 
accomplished by mankind. We must remember how 
much had to be learnt, how many arts had to be invented, 
before the savage hunter could settle down into the peace- 
ful, the provident, and the intelligent husbandman. What 
is all our vaunted progress to this great step ? What are 
all our boasted inventions compared with the first great 
discoveries of man, the spinning-wheel and loom, the 
plough, the clay-vessel, the wheel, the boat, the bow, the 
hatchet, and the forge ? Surely, if we reflect, our inven- 
tions are chiefly modes of multiplying or saving force ; 
these were the transformations of substances, or the inter- 
change of force. Ours are, for the most part, but expan- 
sions of the first idea ; these are the creations. 

Since it is with agriculture solely that organised society 
begins, it is with justice that the origin of civilisation is 
always traced to those great plains where alone agriculture 
was then possible. It was in the basins of the great Asian 
rivers, the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Indus, the Ganges, 
the Yang-tse-kiang, and in that of the Nile, that fixed 
societies began. There, where irrigation is easy, the soil 
rich, the country open, cultivation arose, and with cul- 
tivation of the soil the accumulation of its produce, and 
with more easy sustenance, leisure, thought, and obser- 



32 THE MEANING OF HISTORY". 

vation. Use taught man to distinguish between matter 
and life, man and brute, thought and motion. Men's eyes 
were opened, and they saw that nature was not alive, and 
had no will. They watched the course of the sun, and saw 
that it moved in fixed ways. They watched the sea, and 
saw that it rose and fell by tides. Then, too, they needed 
knowledge and they needed teachers. They needed men 
to measure their fields, their barns, to teach them to build 
strongly, to calculate the seasons for them, to predict the 
signs of the weather, to expound the will of the great 
powers who ruled them. Thus slowly rose the notion' of 
gods, the unseen rulers of these powers of earth and sky — 
a god of the sea, of the river, of the sky, of the sun ; and 
between them and their gods rose the first priests, the 
ministers and interpreters of their will, and polytheism and 
theocracies began. 

Thus simply amidst these great settled societies of the 
plain began the great human institution, the priesthood — 
at first only wiser elders who had some deeper knowledge 
of the arts of settled life. Gradually knowledge advanced ; 
knowledge of the seasons and of the stars or of astronomy, 
of enumeration or arithmetic, of measurement or geometry, 
of medicine and surgery, of building, of the arts, of 
music, of poetry ; gradually this knowledge became deposi- 
ted in the hands of a few, was accumulated and transmitted 
from father to son. The intellect asserted its power, and 
the rule over a peaceful and industrious race slowly passed 
into the hands of a priesthood, or an educated and sacred 
class. These were the men who founded the earliest form 
of civilised existence ; the most complete, the most endur- 
ing, the most consistent of all human societies, the great 
theocracies of religious societies of Asia and Egypt. Thus 
for thousands of years before the earliest records of history, 
in all the great plains of Asia and along the Nile, nations 



THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 33 

flourished in a high and elaborate form of civilisation. We 
will examine one only, the best known to us, the type, the 
earliest and the greatest — the Egyptian. 

The task to be accomplished was immense. It was 
nothing less than the foundation of permanent and organ- 
ised society. Till this was done all was in danger. All 
knowledge might be lost, the arts might perish, the civil 
community might break up. Hitherto there had been no 
permanence, no union, no system. What was needed was 
to form the intellectual and material framework of a fixed 
nation. And this the Egyptian priesthood undertook. The 
spot was favourable to the attempt. In that great, rich 
plain, walled off" on all sides by the desert or by the sea, it 
was possible to found a society at once industrial, peaceful, 
and settled. They needed judges to direct them, teachers 
to instruct them, men of science to help them, governors to 
rule them, preachers to admonish them, physicians to heal 
them, artists to train them, and priests to sacrifice for 
them. To meet these wants a special order of men spon- 
taneously arose, by whose half-conscious efforts a complete 
system of society was gradually and slowly formed. In 
their hands was concentrated the whole intellectual product 
of ages ; this they administered for the common good. 

Gradually by their care there arose a system of regular 
industry. To this end they divided out by their superior 
skill all the arts and trades of life. Each work was appor- 
tioned, each art had its subordinate arts. Then as a mode 
of perpetuating skill in crafts, to insure a sound apprentice- 
ship of every labour, they caused or enabled each man's 
work to become hereditary within certain broad limits, and 
thus created or sanctioned a definite series of castes. To 
give sanction to the whole, they consecrated each labour, 
and made each workman's toil a part of his religious duty. 
Then they organised a scheme of general education. They 
C 



34 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

provided a system of teaching common to all, adapted to 
the work of each. They provided for the special education 
of the sacred class in the whole circle of existing knowl- 
edge ; they collected observations, they treasured up dis- 
coveries, and recorded events. Next they organised a 
system of government. They established property, they 
divided out the land, they set up landmarks, they devised 
rules for its tenure, they introduced law, and magistrates, 
and governors ; provinces were divided into districts, 
towns, and villages ; violence was put down, a strict police 
exercised, regular taxes imposed. Next they organised a 
system of morality ; the social, the domestic, and the 
personal duties were minutely defined ; practices relating 
to health, cleanliness, and temperance were enforced by 
religious obligations : every act of life, every moment of 
existence, was made a part of sacred duty. Lastly, they 
organised national life by a vast system of common relig- 
ious rites, having imposing ceremonies which awakened 
the imagination and kindled the emotions, bound up the 
whole community into an united people, and gave stability 
to their national existence, by the awful sense of a common 
and mysterious belief. 

If we want to know what such a system of life was 
like, let us go into some museum of Egyptian antiquities, 
where we may see representations of their mode of ex- 
istence carved upon their walls. There we may see nearly 
all the arts of life as we know them — weaving and spin- 
ning, working in pottery, glass-blowing, building, carving, 
and painting ; ploughing, sowing, threshing, and gathering 
into barns ; boating, irrigation, fishing, wine-pressing, 
dancing, singing, and playing — a vast community, in 
short, orderly, peaceful, and intelligent ; capable of gigan- 
tic works and of refined arts, before which we are lost in 
wonder ; a civilised community busy and orderly as a hive 



THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 35 

of bees, amongst whom every labour and function was 
arranged in perfect harmony and distinctness : all this may 
be seen upon monuments 5000 years old. 

Here, then, we have civilisation itself. All the arts of 
life had been brought to perfection, and indelibly im- 
planted on the mind of men so that they could never be 
utterly lost. All that constitutes orderly government, the 
institutions of society, had been equally graven into human 
existence. A check had been placed upon the endless 
and desultory warfare of tribes ; and great nations existed. 
The ideas of domestic life, marriage, filial duty, care for 
the aged and the dead, had become a second nature. The 
wholesome practices of social life, of which we think so 
lightly, had all been invented and established. The prac- 
tice of regular holidays, social gatherings, and common 
celebrations began — the record and division of past ages, 
the exact times of the seasons, of the year, the months 
and its festivals ; the great yet little-prized institution of 
the week. Nor were the gains to thought less. In the 
peaceful rolling on of those primeval ages, observations 
had been stored up by an unbroken succession of priests, 
without which science never would have existed. It was 
no small feat in science first to have determined the exact 
length of the year. It needed observations stretching over 
a cycle of 1500 years. But the Egyptian priests had 
enumerated the stars, and could calculate for centuries in 
advance the times of their appearance. They possessed 
the simpler processes of arithmetic and geometry ; they 
knew something of chemistry, and much of botany, and 
even a little of surgery. There was one invention yet 
more astonishing ; the Egyptians invented, the Phoenicians 
popularised, the art of writing, and transmitted the alpha- 
bet — our alphabet — to the Greeks. A truly amazing 
intellectual effort was required for the formation of the 



36 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

alphabet ; not to shape the forms, but first to conceive that 
the complex sounds we utter could be classified, and re- 
duced down to those simple elements we call the letters. 
We can imagine hardly any effort of abstract thought 
more difficult than this, and certainly none more essential 
to the progress of the human mind. 

They had indeed great minds who did all this ; for they 
did not so much promote civilisation as create it. Never 
perhaps before or since has any order of men received this 
universal culture ; never perhaps has any order shown this 
many-sided activity and strength. Never before or since 
has such power been concentrated in the same hands — 
the entire moral and material control over society. They 
had great minds, great souls also, who could conceive and 
carry through such a task — greater perhaps in this that 
they did not care to celebrate themselves for posterity, but 
passed away when their work was done, contented to have 
seen itjdone, as Moses did when he went up alone to die 
in secret, that no man might know or worship at his tomb. 
The debt we owe these men and these times is great. It 
is said that man learns more in the first year of his child- 
hood than in any year subsequently of his life. And in 
this long childhood of the world, how many things were 
learnt ! Is it clear that they could have been learnt in any 
other way ? Caste, in its decline, is the most degrading 
of human institutions. It is doubtful if without it the 
acts of life could have been taught and preserved in those 
unsettled ages of war and migration. We rebel justly 
against all priestly tyranny over daily life and customs. 
It is probable that without these sanctions of religion and 
law, the rules of morality, of decency, and health could 
never have been imposed upon the lawless instincts of 
mankind. We turn with repugnance from the monotony 
of those unvarying ages, and of that almost stagnant 



THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 3/ 

civilisation ; but are we sure that without it, it would have 
been possible to collect the observations of distant ages, 
and the records of dynasties and eras on which all science 
and all history rest ? would it have been possible to pro- 
vide a secure and tranquil field in which the slow growth 
of language, art, and thought could have worked out, 
generation after generation, their earliest and most diffi- 
cult result ? 

No form of civilisation has ever endured so long ; its 
consequences are stamped deeply still upon our daily life ; 
yet the time came when even these venerable systems 
must die. 

Their work was done, and it was time for them to pass 
away. Century after century had gone by, teaching the 
same lessons, but adding nothing knew. Human life 
began to be stifled in these primeval forms. The whole em- 
pire of the priests grew evil and corrupt. We know them 
chiefly in their decline, when kings and conquerors had 
usurped and perverted the patient energies of these long- 
tutored peoples. These great societies passed from indus- 
trial and social communities into stupendous tyrannies, 
made up of cruelty and pride. It was the result of the 
great and fatal error which lay beneath the whole priestly 
system. They had misconceived their strength and their 
knowledge. They had undertaken to organise society 
whilst their own knowledge was feeble and imperfect. 
They had tried to establish the rule of mind, of all rules 
the most certainly destined to fail ; and they based that 
rule upon error and misconception. They pretended to 
govern society instead of confining themselves to the only 
possible task, to teach it. They who had begun by secur- 
ing progress, now were its worst obstacles. They who 
began to rule by the right of intelligence, now dreaded 
and crushed intelligence. They fell as every priesthood 



38 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

has fallen which has ever based its claims upon imperfect 
knowledge, or pretended to command in the practical 
affairs of life. Yet there was only one way in which the 
nightmare of this intellectual and social oppression could 
be shaken off, and these strong systems broken up. It 
was no doubt by the all-powerful instinct of conquest, and 
by the growth of vast military monarchies, that the change 
was accomplished. Those antique societies of peace and 
industry degenerated at last into conquering empires ; and, 
during the thousand years which precede the Persian 
empire, Asia was swept from side to side by the armies 
of Assyrian, Median, Babylonian, and Egyptian conquerors. 
Empire after empire rose and fell with small result, save 
that they broke the death-like sleep of ages, and brought 
distant people from the ends of the earth into contact with 
each other. 

The researches and discoveries of our own generation 
have thrown much light on these Asiatic kingdoms, and 
many names and events have been sufficiently identified. 
But no regular and authentic history of the tracts enclosed 
between the Black Sea, the Caspian, the Mediterranean, 
and the Persian Gulf has yet become possible ; nor has our 
general conception of the civilisation of these Asiatic mon- 
archies been modified in essential features. From time to 
time we find traces of efforts made by independent peo- 
ples, Arabs, Syrians, Phoenicians, and Jews, to free them- 
selves from the pressure of the regime of caste and of the 
military empires. Of these efforts the Jewish nationality 
is, from the moral and spiritual point of view, far the most 
important. From the practical and material point of view, 
the most important is undoubtedly the Phoenician. These 
two most interesting peoples may be traced for eight or 
ten centuries before they were both absorbed in the Per- 
sian empire, making heroic and persevering efforts to found 



THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 39 

a new type of society, or to develop the arts and resources 
of civilised life. The Jewish nation, though its subsequent 
influence on the conscience and imagination of mankind 
has made it of such transcendant interest to us in a later 
age, was too small, too feebly seated, and with too little of 
practical genius, to produce any decisive effect on the gen- 
eral course of civil organisation. 

That very remarkable people, the Phoenicians, did more 
to that end. Their wonderful enterprise and indomitable 
nature, their seats on the shores of the Mediterranean and 
the possession of maritime strongholds, with their unique 
aptitude for the sea in the early ages, enabled them to 
play a most important part in the evolution of human civ- 
ilisation. They did what Venice did in the Middle Ages 
and Holland in subsequent times. They carried the arts, 
inventions, and products of the various continents and 
zones of climate over the whole known world from Britain 
to Ceylon. But they were too much dispersed, too mobile, 
and too defective in military and political genius to con- 
front a great empire, and they successively fell before the 
Assyrian, Babylonish, and Egyptian conquerors. Their 
arts, their trade, their naval supremacy, passed to the in- 
habitants of Western seaboards, islands, and more sheltered 
bays. 

The world seemed in danger of perishing by exhaustion. 
It needed a new spirit to revive it. But now another race 
appears upon the scene ; a branch of that great Aryan 
people, who from the high lands of central Asia have 
swept over Assyria, India, and Europe, the people who as 
Greeks, Romans, Gauls, or Teutons have been the fore- 
most of mankind, of whom we ourselves are but a younger 
branch. Now, too, the darkness which covered those 
earlier ages of the world rolls off : accurate history begins, 
and the drama proceeds in the broad light of certainty. 



40 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

It is about 550 b.c. that the first great name in general 
history appears. Cyrus founds the Persian empire. For 
ages, along the mountain slopes between the Hindoo Koosh 
and the Caspian Sea, the Persian race had remained a 
simple horde of wandering herdsmen, apart from the vast 
empires of Babylon and Nineveh in the plains below. 
There they grew up with nobler and freer thoughts, not 
crushed by the weight of a powerful monarchy, not de- 
graded by decaying superstitions, nor enervated by mate- 
rial riches. They honoured truth, freedom, and energy. 
They had faith in themselves and their race. They valued 
morality more than ceremonies. They believed in a Su- 
preme Power of the universe. Just as the northern nations 
afterwards poured over the Roman empire, so these 
stronger tribes were preparing to descend upon the decay- 
ing remains of the Asiatic empires. They needed only a 
captain, and they found one worthy of the task in the 
great King Cyrus. 

Marshalling his mountain warriors into a solid army, 
Cyrus swept down upon the plains, and one by one the 
empires fell before him, until from the Mediterranean to 
the Indus, from Tartary to the Arabian Gulf, all Asia sub- 
mitted to his sway. His successors continued his work, 
pushing across Arabia, Egypt, Africa, and Northern Asia 
itself. There over that enormous tract they built up the 
Persian monarchy, which swallowed up and fused into one 
so many ancient empires. The conquerors were soon ab- 
sorbed, like the Northmen, into the theocratic faith and 
life of the conquered ; and throughout half of the then in- 
habited globe one rule, one religion, one system of life 
alone existed. But the Persian kings could not rest whilst 
a corner remained unconquered. On the shores of the 
Mediterranean they had come upon a people who had de- 
fied them with strange audacity. Against them the whole 



THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 41 

weight of the Asian empire was put forth. For ten years 
fleets and armies were preparing. There came archers 
from the wastes of Tartary and the deserts of Africa; 
charioteers from Nineveh and Babylon ; horsemen, club- 
men, and spearmen ; the mailclad footmen of Persia ; the 
fleets of the Phoenicians ; all the races of the East gath- 
ered in one vast host, and, as legend said, 5,000,000 men 
and 2000 ships poured over the Eastern seas upon the 
devoted people. 

And who were they who seemed thus doomed ? Along 
the promontories and islands of the eastern Mediterranean 
there dwelt the scattered race whom we call Greeks, who 
had gradually worked out a form of life totally differing 
from the old, who had wonderfully expanded the old arts 
of life and modes of thought. With them the destinies of 
the world then rested for all its future progress. With 
them all was life, change, and activity. Broken into sec- 
tions by infinite bays, mountains, and rivers, scattered over 
a long line of coasts and islands, the Greek race, with na- 
tures as varied as their own beautiful land, as restless as 
their own seas, had never been moulded into one great 
solid empire, and early threw off the weight of a ruling 
caste of priests. No theocracy or religious system of 
society ever could establish itself amidst a race so full of 
life and motion, exposed to influences from without, divided 
within. They had borrowed the arts of life from the great 
Eastern peoples, and, in borrowing, had wonderfully im- 
proved them. The alphabet, shipbuilding, commerce, 
they had from the Phoenicians ; architecture, sculpture, 
painting, from the Assyrian or Lydian empires. Geome- 
try, arithmetic, astronomy, they had borrowed from the 
Egyptians. The various fabrics, arts, and appliances of 
the East came to them in profusion across the seas. Their 
earliest lawgivers, rulers, and philosophers had all travelled 



42 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

through the great Asian kingdom, and came back to their 
small country with a new sense of all the institutions and 
ideas of civilised life. 

The Greeks borrowed, they did not imitate. Alone as 
yet, they had thrown off the tyranny of custom, of caste, 
of kingcraft, and of priestcraft. They only had moulded 
the ponderous column and the uncouth colossus of the 
East into the graceful shaft and the lifelike figure of the 
gods. They only had dared to think freely, to ask them- 
selves what or whence was this earth, to meet the prob- 
lems of abstract thought, to probe the foundations of right 
and wrong. Lastly, they alone had conceived the idea of 
a people not the servants of one man or of a class, not 
chained down in a rigid order of submission, but the free 
and equal citizens of a republic; for on them first had 
dawned the idea of a civilised community in which men 
should be not masters and slaves, but brothers. 

On poured the myriads of Asia, creating a famine as 
they marched, drying up the streams, and covering the 
seas with their ships. Who does not know the tale of 
that immortal effort ? — how the Athenians armed old 
and young, burned their city, and went on board their 
ships — how for three days Leonidas and his three hun- 
dred held the pass against the Asian host, and lay down, 
each warrior at his post, calmly smiling in death — how 
the Greek ships lay in ambush in their islands, for the 
mighty fleet of Persia — how the unwieldy mass was 
broken and pierced by its dauntless enemy — how, all 
day, the battle raged beneath the eyes of the great king 
himself, and, at its close, the seas were heaving with the 
wrecks of the shattered host. Of all the battles in his- 
tory, this one of Salamis was the most precious to the 
human race. No other tale of war can surpass it. For 
in that war the heroism, the genius, the marvellous audac- 









THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 43 

ity shown by these pigmy fleets and armies of a small, 
weak race, withstood and crushed the entire power of 
Asia, and preserved from extinction the life and intellect 
of future ages. 

Victory followed upon victory, and the whole Greek 
race expanded with this amazing triumph. The old world 
had been brought face to face with the intellect which 
was to transform it. The Greek mind, with the whole 
East open to it, exhibited inexhaustible activity. A cen- 
tury sufficed to develop a thoroughly new phase of civili- 
sation. They carried the arts to a height whereon they 
stand as the types for all time. In poetry they exhausted 
and perfected every form of composition. In politics they 
built up a multitude of communities, rich with a prolific 
store of political and social institutions. Throughout their 
stormy history stand forth great names. Now and then 
there rose amongst them leaders of real genius. For a 
time they showed some splendid instances of public virtue, 
of social life, patriotism, elevation, sagacity, and energy. 
For a moment Athens at least may have believed that 
she had reached the highest type of political existence. 
But with all this activity and greatness there was no true 
unity. Wonderful as was their ingenuity, their versatility 
and energy, it was too often wasted in barren struggles 
and wanton restlessness. For a century and a half after 
the Persian invasion, the petty Greek states contended in 
one weary round of contemptible civil wars and aimless 
revolutions. One after another they cast their great men 
aside, to think out by themselves the thoughts that were 
to live for all time, and gave themselves up to be the 
victims of degraded adventurers. For one moment only 
in their history, if indeed for that, they did become a 
nation. At last, wearied out by endless wars and con- 
stant revolutions, the Greek states by force and fraud 



44 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

were fused in one people by the Macedonian kings ; and 
by Macedon, instead of by true Hellas, the great work so 
long postponed, but through their history never forgotten, 
was at length attempted — the work of avenging the Per- 
sian invasion, and subduing Asia. 

Short and wonderful was that career of conquest, due 
wholly to one marvellous mind. Alexander, indeed, in 
military and practical genius seems to stand above all 
Greeks, as Caesar above all Romans ; they two the great- 
est chiefs of the ancient world. No story in history is so 
romantic as the tale of that ten years of victory when 
Alexander, at the head of some thirty thousand veteran 
Greeks, poured over Asia, crushing army after army, tak- 
ing city after city, and receiving the homage of prince 
after prince, himself fighting like a knight-errant : until, 
subduing the Persian empire, and piercing Asia from side 
to side, and having reached even the great rivers of India, 
he turned back to Babylon to organise his vast empire, to 
found new cities, pour life into the decrepit frame of the 
East, and give to these entranced nations the arts and 
wisdom of Greece. For this he came to Babylon, but 
came thither only to die. Endless confusion ensued ; 
province after province broke up into a separate king- 
dom, and the vast empire of Alexander became the prey 
of military adventurers. 

Yet, though this creation of his genius, like so much 
else that Greece accomplished, was, indeed, in appearance 
a disastrous failure, still it had not been in vain. The 
Greek mind was diffused over the East like the rays of 
the rising sun when it revives and awakens slumbering 
nature. The Greek language, the most wonderful instru- 
ment of thought ever composed by man, became common 
to the whole civilised world ; it bound together all edu- 
cated men from the Danube to the Indus. The Greek 



THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 45 

literature, poetry, history, science, philosophy, and art 
were at once the common property of the empire. The 
brilliance, the audacity, the strength of the Greek reason- 
ing awoke the dormant powers of thought. The idea of 
laws, the idea of states, the idea of citizenship, came like 
a revelation upon the degenerate slaves of the Eastern 
tyrannies. Nor was the result less important to the Greek 
mind itself. Now, at last, the world was open without 
obstacle. The philosophers poured over the new empire ; 
they ransacked the records of primeval times ; they stud- 
ied the hoarded lore of the Egyptian and Chaldean priests. 
Old astronomical observations, old geometric problems, 
long concealed, were thrown open to them. They trav- 
elled over the whole continent of Asia, studying its 
wonders of the past, collecting its natural curiosities, ex- 
amining its surface, its climates, its production, its plants, 
its animals, and its human races, customs, and ideas. 
Lastly, they gathered up and pondered over the half- 
remembered traditions and the half-comprehended mys- 
teries of Asian belief : the conceptions which had risen 
up before the intense abstraction of Indian and Baby- 
lonian mystics, Jewish and Egyptian prophets and priests ; 
the notion of some great principle or thought, or Being, 
utterly unseen and unknown, above all gods, and without 
material form. Thus arose the earliest germ of that spirit 
which, by uniting Greek logic with Chaldean or Jewish 
imagination, prepared the way for the religious systems 
of Mussulman and Christian. 

Such was the result of the great conquest of Alexander. 
Not by its utter failure as an empire are we to judge it ; 
not by the vices and follies of its founder, nor the profli- 
gate orgies of its dissolution, must we condemn it. We 
must value it as the means whereby the effete world of 
the East was renewed by the life of European thought, by 



46 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

which arose the first ideas of nature as a whole and of 
mankind as a whole, by which the ground was first pre- 
pared for the Roman empire, and for Christian and 
Mahometan religion. 

As a nation the Greeks had established little that was 
lasting. They had changed much ; they had organised 
hardly anything. As the great Asian system had sacri- 
ficed all to permanence, so the Greek sacrificed all to 
movement. The Greeks had created no system of law, 
no political order, no social system. If civilisation had 
stopped there, it would have ended in ceaseless agitation, 
discord, and dissolution. Their character was wanting in 
self-command and tenacity, and their genius was too often 
wasted in intellectual licence. Yet if politically they were 
unstable, intellectually they were great. The lives of 
their great heroes are their rich legacy to all future ages ; 
Solon, Themistocles, Pericles, Epaminondas, and Demos- 
thenes stand forth as the types of bold and creative leaders 
of men. The story of their best days has scarcely its 
equal in history. In art they gave us the works of Phidias, 
the noblest image of the human form ever created by man. 
In poetry, the models of all time — Homer, the greatest 
and the earliest of poets ; ^Eschylus, the greatest master of 
the tragic art ; Plato, the most eloquent of moral teachers ; 
Pindar, the first of all in lyric art. In philosophy and in 
science the Greek mind laid the foundations of all knowl- 
edge, beyond which, until the last three centuries, very 
partial advance had been made. Building on the ground 
prepared by the Egyptians, they did much to perfect 
arithmetic, raised geometry to a science by itself, and 
invented that system of astronomy which served the world 
for fifteen centuries. In knowledge of animal life and the 
art of healing they constructed a body of accurate observa- 
tions and sound analysis ; in physics, or the knowledge of 



THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 4/ 

the material earth, they advanced to the point at which 
little was added till the time of Bacon himself. 

In abstract thought their results were still more surpris- 
ing. All the ideas that lie at the root of our modern 
abstract philosophy may be found in germ in Greece. 
The schools of modern metaphysics are the development 
of conceptions vaguely grasped by them. They analysed 
with perfect precision and wonderful minuteness the 
processes employed in language and in reasoning ; they 
systematised grammar and logic, rhetoric and music ; they 
correctly analysed the human mind, the character, the 
emotions, and founded the science of morality and the art 
of education ; they correctly analysed the elements of 
society and political life, and initiated the science of politics, 
or the theory of social union. Lastly, they criticised and 
laid bare all the existing beliefs of mankind ; pierced the 
imposing falsehood of the old religions ; meditated on all 
the various answers , ever given to the problem of human 
destiny, of the universe and its origin, and slowly worked 
out the conception of unity through the whole visible and 
invisible universe, which, in some shape or other, has been 
the belief of man for twenty centuries. Such were their 
gifts to the world. It was an intellect active, subtle, and 
real, marked by the true scientific character of freedom, 
precision, and consistency. And, as the Greek intellect 
overtopped the intellect of all races of men, and combined 
in itself the gifts of all others, so were the great intellects 
of Greece all overtopped and concentrated in one great 
mind — the greatest, doubtless, of all human minds — the 
matchless Aristotle ; as the poet says, ' the master of 
those who know,' who, in all branches of human knowl- 
edge, built the foundations of abiding truth. 

Let us pause for moment to reflect what point we have 
reached in the history of civilisation. Asia had founded 



48 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

the first arts and usages of material life, begun the earliest 
social institutions, and taught us the rudiments of science 
and of thought. Greece had expanded all these in infinite 
variety and subtlety, had instituted the free state, and 
given life to poetry and art, had formed fixed habits of ac- 
curate reasoning and of systematic observation. Materially 
and intellectually civilisation existed. Yet in Greece we 
feel that, socially, everything is abortive. The Greeks 
had not grown into a united nation. They split into a 
multitude of jealous republics. These republics split into 
hostile and restless factions. And when the genius of 
the Macedonian kings had at last founded an empire, it 
lasted but twenty years, and gave place to even more 
colossal confusion. All that we associate with true national 
existence was yet to come, but the noble race who were 
to found it had long been advancing towards their high 
destiny. Alexander, perhaps, had scarcely heard of that 
distant, half-educated people, who for four centuries had 
been slowly building up the power which was to absorb 
and supersede his empire. 

)C Far beyond the limits of his degenerate subjects, 
worthier successors of his genius were at hand : the 
Romans were coming upon the world. The Greeks 
founded the city, the Romans the nation. The Greeks 
were the authors of philosophy, the Romans of govern- 
ment, justice, and peace. The Greek ideal was thought, 
the Roman ideal was law. The Greeks taught us the 
noble lesson of individual freedom, the Romans the still 
nobler lesson, the sense of social duty. It is just, there- 
fore, that to the Romans, as to the people who alone 
throughout all ages gave unity, peace, and order to the 
civilised world, who gave us the elements of our modern 
political life, and have left us the richest record of public 
duty, heroism, and self-sacrifice — it is just that to them 



THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 49 

we assign the place of the noblest nation in ancient history. 
That which marks the Roman with his true greatness was 
his devotion to the social body, his sense of self-surrender 
to country : a duty to which the claims of family and person 
were implicitly to yield ; which neither death, nor agony, 
nor disgrace could subdue ; which was the only reward, 
pleasure, or religion which a true citizen could need. This 
was the greatness, not of a few leading characters, but of 
an entire people during many generations. The Roman 
state did not give merely examples of heroes — it was 
formed of heroes ; nor were they less marked by their 
sense of obedience, submission to rightful authority where 
the interest of the state required it, submission to order 
and law. 

Nor were the Romans without a deep sense of justice. 
They did not war to crush the conquered ; once subdued, 
they dealt with them as their fellows, they made equal 
laws and a common rule for them ; they bound them all 
into the same service of their common country. Above 
all other nations in the world they believed in their mis- 
sion and destiny. From age to age they paused not in 
one great object. No prize could beguile them, no de- 
lusion distract them. Each Roman felt the divinity of the 
Eternal City, destined always to march onwards in triumph : 
in its service every faculty of his mind was given ; life, 
wealth, and rest were as nothing to this cause. In this 
faith they could plan out for the distant future, build up 
so as to prepare for vast extension, calculate far distant 
schemes, and lay stone by stone the walls of an enduring 
structure. Hence throughout the great age each Roman 
was a statesman, for he needed to provide for the future 
ages of his country ; each Roman was a citizen of the 
world, for all nations were destined to be his fellow- 
citizens ;- each Roman could command, for he had learnt 
D 



50 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

to obey, and to know that he who commands and he who 
obeys are but the servants of one higher power — their 
common fatherland. 

Long and stern were the efforts by which this power 
was built up. Deep as is the mystery which covers the 
origin of Rome, we can still trace dimly how, about 
the centre of the Italian peninsula, along the banks of the 
Tiber, fragments of two tribes were fused by some heroic 
chieftain into one ; the first more intellectual, supple, and 
ingenious, the second more stubborn, courageous, and 
faithful. We see more clearly how this compound people 
rose through the strength of these qualities of mind and 
character to be the foremost of the neighbouring tribes ; 
how they long maintained that religious order of society 
which the Greeks so early shook off ; how it moulded all 
the institutions of their life, filled them with reverence for 
the duties of family, for their parents, their wives, for the 
memory and the spirit of their dead ancestors, taught them 
submission to judges and chiefs, devotion to their mother- 
city, love for her commands, her laws, and her traditions, 
trained them to live and die for her — indeed, compassed 
their whole existence with a sense of duty towards their 
fellows and each other ; how this sense of social duty grew 
into the very fibres of their iron natures, kept the state 
through all dangers rooted in the imperishable trust and 
instinct of a massive people ; then how this well-knit race 
advanced step by step upon their neighbouring tribes, 
slowly united them in one, gave them their own laws, made 
them their own citizens ; step by step advanced upon the 
only civilised nation of the peninsula, the theocratic society 
of Etruria, took from them the arts of war and peace ; how 
the hordes of Northern barbarians poured over the penin- 
sula like a flood, sweeping all the nations below its waters, 
and when they emerged, Rome only was left strong and 



THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 5 I 

confident ; how, after four centuries of constant struggle, 
held up always by the sense of future greatness, the 
Romans had at length absorbed one by one the leading- 
nations of Italy, and by one supreme effort, after thirty 
years of war, had crushed their noblest and strongest 
rivals, their equals in all but genius and fortune, and stood 
at last the masters of Italy, from shore to shore. 

Soon came the great crisis of their history, the long 
wars of Rome and Carthage. On one side was the genius 
of war, empire, law, and art, on the other the genius of 
commerce, industry, and wealth. The subjects of Carthage 
were scattered over the Mediterranean, the power of Rome 
was compact. Carthage fought with regular mercenaries, 
Rome with her disciplined citizens. Carthage had con- 
summate generals, but Rome had matchless soldiers. 
Long the scale trembled. Not once nor twice was Rome 
stricken down to the dust. Punic fleets swept the seas. 
African horsemen scoured the plains. Barbarian hordes 
were gathered up by the wealth of Carthage, and mar- 
shalled by the genius of her great captain. For her fought 
the greatest military genius of the ancient world, perhaps 
of all time. Hannibal, himself a child of the camp, train- 
ing a veteran army in the wars of Spain, led his victorious 
troops across Gaul, crossed the Alps, poured down upon 
Italy, struck down army after army, and at last, by one 
crowning victory, scattered the last military force of Rome. 
Beset by an invincible army in the heart of Italy, her 
strongholds stormed, without generals or armies, without 
money or allies, without cavalry or ships, it seemed that 
the last hour of Rome was come. Now, if ever, she 
needed that faith in her destiny, the solid strength of her 
slow growth, and the energy of her entire people. They 
did not fail her. In her worst need her people held firm, 
her senate never lost heart, armies grew out of the very 



52 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

remnants and slaves within her walls. Inch by inch the 
invader was driven back, watched and besieged in turn. 
The genius of Rome revived in Scipio. He it was who, 
with an eagle's sight, saw the weakness of her enemy, 
swooped, with an eagle's flight, upon Carthage herself, and 
at last, before her walls, overthrew Hannibal, and with him 
the hopes and power of his country and his race. 

It is in these first centuries that we see the source 
of the greatness of Rome. Then was founded her true 
strength. What tales of heroism, dignity, and endurance 
have they not left us ! There are no types of public virtue 
grander than these. Brutus condemning his traitor sons 
to death ; Horatius defending the bridge against an army ; 
Cincinnatus taken from the plough to rule the state, re- 
turning from ruling the state again to the plough ; the 
Decii, father and son, solemnly devoting themselves to 
death to propitiate the gods of Rome ; Regulus the prisoner 
going to his home only to exhort his people not to yield, 
and returning calmly to his prison ; Cornelia offering up 
her children to death and shame for the cause of the 
people ; great generals content to live like simple yeomen ; 
old and young ever ready to march to certain death ; hearts 
proof against eloquence, gold, or pleasure ; noble matrons 
training their children to duty ; senates ever confident in 
their country ; generals returning from conquered nations 
in poverty ; the leader of triumphant armies becoming the 
equal of the humblest citizens. 

Carthage once overcome, the conquest of the world fol- 
lowed rapidly. Spain and the islands of the Mediterranean 
Sea were the prizes of the war. Lower Gaul, Greece, and 
Macedon were also within fifty years incorporated in Rome. 
She pushed further. The whole empire of Alexander fell 
into her hands, and at length, after seven hundred years 
of conquest, she remained the mistress of the civilised 



THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 53 

world. But, long before this, she herself had become the 
prey of convulsions. The marvellous empire, so rapidly- 
expanded, had deeply corrupted the power which had won 
it. Her old heroes were no more. Her virtues failed her, 
and her vast dominions had long become the prize of 
bloody and selfish factions. The ancient republic, whose 
freemen had once met to consult in the Forum, broke up 
in the new position for which her system was utterly unfit. 
For nearly a century the great empire had inevitably 
tended towards union in a single centre. One dictator 
after another had possessed and misused the sovereign 
power. At last it passed to the worthiest, and the rule 
over the whole ancient world came to its greatest name, 
the noble Julius Caesar. In him were found more than the 
Roman genius for government and law, with a gentleness 
and grace few Romans ever had ; an intellect truly Greek 
in its love of science, of art, in reach and subtlety of 
thought ; and, above all this, in spite of vices and passions 
which he shared with his age, a breadth of view and heart, 
a spirit of human fellowship and social progress, peculiar 
to one who was the friend of men of different races, coun- 
tries, and ideas. Julius was consummate general, orator, 
poet, historian, ruler, lawgiver, reformer, and philosopher ; 
in the highest sense the statesman, magnanimous, provi- 
dent, laborious, large-hearted, affable, resolute, and brave. 
With him the Roman empire enters on a new and better 
phase. He first saw and showed how this vast aggregate 
of men must be ruled no longer as the subjects of one 
conquering city, but as a real and single state governed in 
the interest of all, with equal rights and common laws ; 
and Rome be no longer the mistress, but the leader only 
of the nations. In this spirit he broke with the old 
Roman temper of narrow nationality and pride ; raised to 
power and trust new men of all ranks and of all nations ; 



54 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 



opened the old Roman privileges of citizenship to the new 
subjects ; laboured to complete and extend the Roman law ; 
reorganised the administration of the distant provinces ; 
and sought to extinguish the trace of party fury and hatred. 
When the selfish rage of the old Roman aristocracy 
had struck him down before his work was half complete, 
yet his work did not perish with him. The Roman 
empire at last rose to the level which he had planned 
for it. For some two centuries it did succeed in main- 
taining an era of progress, peace, and civilisation — a 
government, indeed, at times frightfully corrupt, at times 
convulsed to its foundations, yet in the main in accordance 
with the necessities of the times, and rising in its highest 
types to wise, tranquil, and prudent rule, embracing all, 
open to all, just to all, and beloved by all. Then it was, 
during those two centuries, broken as they were by 
temporary convulsions, that the nations of Europe rose 
into civilised life. Then the Spaniard, the Gaul, the 
Briton, the German, the people that dwelt along the whole 
course of the Rhine and the Danube, first learnt the arts 
and ideas of life ; law, government, society, education, 
industry, appeared amongst them; and over the tracts 
of land trodden for so many centuries by rival tribes and 
devastating hordes, security first appeared, turmoil gave 
place to repose, and there rose the notion, not forgotten 
for ten centuries, of the solemn Peace of Rome. 

Let us recount what it was that the Roman had given 
to the world. In the first place, his law — that Roman 
law, the most perfect political creation of the human 
mind, which for one thousand years grew with one even 
and expanding life — the law which is the basis of all 
the law of Europe, including even our own. Then the 
political system of towns. The actual municipal constitu- 
tion of the old cities of Western Europe, from Gibraltar 



THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 55 

to the Baltic, from the Channel to Sicily, is but a develop- 
ment of the Roman city, which lasted through the Middle 
Ages, and began modern industrial life. Next, all the 
institutions of administration and police which modern 
Europe has developed had their origin there. To them 
in the Middle Ages men turned when the age of confusion 
was ending. To them again men turned when the Middle 
Ages themselves were passing away. The establishment 
of elective assemblies, of graduated magistracies, of local 
and provincial justice, of public officers and public institu- 
tions, free museums, baths, theatres, libraries, and schools 
■ — • all that we understand by organised society, in a word, 
may be traced back to the Empire. Throughout all 
Western Europe, from that germ, civilisation arose and 
raised its head after the invasion of the Northern tribes. 
From the same source, too, arose the force, at once 
monarchic and municipal, which overthrew the feudal 
system. It was the remnant of the old Roman ideas of 
provincial organisation that first formed the counties and 
duchies which afterwards coalesced into a state. It 
was the memory of the Roman township which gave birth 
to the first free towns of Europe. It was the tradition 
of a Roman emperor which, by long intermediate steps, 
transformed the Teutonic chieftain into the modern king 
or emperor. London, York, Lincoln, Winchester, Glouces- 
ter, and Chester were Roman cities, and formed then, as 
they did for the earlier periods of our history, the pivots 
of our national administration. Paris, Rouen, Lyons, 
Marseilles, Bordeaux, in France ; Constance, Basle, Cob- 
lentz, Cologne, upon the Rhine ; Cadiz, Barcelona, Seville, 
Toledo, Lisbon, in the Iberian — Genoa, Milan, Verona, 
Rome, and Naples in the Italian peninsula, were in 
Roman, as in modern times, the great national centres 
of their respective countries. But, above all else, Rome 



56 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

founded a permanent system of free obedience to the laws 
on the one hand, and a temperate administration of them 
on the other ; the constant sense of each citizen having his 
place in a complex whole. 

The Roman's strength was in action, not in thought ; 
but in thought he gave us something besides his special 
creation of universal law. It was his to discover the 
meaning of history. Egypt had carved on eternal rocks 
the pompous chronicles of kings. The Greeks wrote pro- 
found and brilliant memoirs. It was reserved to a Roman 
to conceive and execute the history of his people stretch- 
ing over seven hundred years, and to give the first proof 
of the continuity and unity of national life. In art the 
Roman did little but develop the Greek types of architec- 
ture into stupendous and complex forms, fit for new uses, 
and worthy of his people's grandeur. But the great tri- 
umphs of his skill were in engineering. He invented 
the arch, the dome, and the viaduct. The bridges of the 
Middle Ages were studied from Roman remains. The 
great domes of Italian cathedrals, of which that of our 
own St. Paul's is an imitation, were formed directly on the 
model of a temple at Rome. But in thought, the great 
gift of Rome was in her language, which has served as 
an admirable instrument of religious, moral, and political 
reflection, and, with many dialectic variations, forms the 
base of the languages of three of the great nations of 
Europe. Then it was, under the Roman empire, that 
the stores of Greek thought became common to the world. 
As the empire of Alexander had shed them over the East, 
the empire of Rome gave them to the West. Greek 
language, literature, poetry, science, and art became the 
common education of the civilised world ; and from the 
Grampians to the Euphrates, from the Atlas to the Rhine 
and the Caucasus, for the first and only time in the history 



THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 57 

of man, Europe, Asia, and Africa formed one political 
whole. The union of the oriental half, indeed, was mainly 
external and material, but throughout the western half 
a common order of ideas prevailed. Their religion was 
the belief in many gods — a system in which each of the 
powers of nature, each virtue, each art, was thought to be 
the manifestation of some separate god. It was a system 
which stimulated activity, self-reliance, toleration, socia- 
bility, and art, but which left the external world a vague 
and unmeaning mystery, and the heart of man a prey to 
violent and conflicting passions. It possessed not that 
idea of unity which alone can sustain philosophy and 
science, and alone can establish in the breast a fixed and 
elevated moral conscience. 

The Roman system had its strong points, but it had 
many weak. They were in the main three. It was a 
system founded upon war, upon slavery, upon fictions and 
dreams. As to war, it is most true that war was not then, 
as in modern times, the monstrous negation of civilisation. 
It seems that by war alone could nations then be pressed 
into that union which was essential to all future progress. 
Whilst war was common to all the nations of antiquity, 
with the Romans alone it became the instrument of prog- 
ress. The Romans warred only to found peace. They 
did not so much conquer as incorporate the nations. Not 
more by the strength of the Roman than by the instinctive 
submission in the conquered to his manifest superiority, 
was the great empire built up. Victors and vanquished 
share in the honour of the common result — law, order, 
peace, and government. When the Romans conquered, 
it was once for all. That which once became a province 
of the Roman empire rested thenceforth in profound 
tranquillity. No standing armies, no brutal soldiery, over- 
awed the interior or the towns. Whilst all within the 



58 THE MEANING OF HISTORY, 

circle of the empire rested in peace, along its frontiers 
stood the disciplined veterans of Rome watching the rov- 
ing hordes of barbarians, protecting the pale of civilisation. 

Still, however useful in its place, it was a system of 
war ; a system necessarily fatal in the long-run to all prog- 
ress, to all industry, to all the domestic virtues, to all the 
gentler feelings. In a state in which all great ideas and 
traditions originated in conquest, the dignity of labour, 
the arts of industry, were never recognised or respected ; 
the era of conquest over, the existence of the great Roman 
became in too many cases purposeless, idle, and vicious. 
Charity, compassion, humanity, were unknown virtues. 
The home was sacrificed. The condition of woman in the 
wreck of the family relations sank to the lowest ebb. 
In a word, the stern virtues of the old Roman private 
life seemed ending in inhuman ferocity and monstrous 
debauchery. 

Secondly, the Roman, like every ancient system, was 
a system of slavery. It existed only for the few. True 
industry was impossible. The whole industrial class were 
degraded. The owners of wealth and its producers were 
alike demoralised. In the great towns were gathered 
a miserable crowd of poor freemen, with all the vices of 
the 'mean whites.' Throughout Italy the land was culti- 
vated, not by a peasantry, not by scattered labourers, but 
by gangs of slaves, guarded in workhouses and watched 
by overseers. Hence usually the free population and 
all civilisation was gathered in the towns. The spaces 
between and around them were wildernesses, with past- 
urage and slaves in place of agriculture and men. 

Thirdly, it was a system based on a belief in a multitude 
of gods, a system without truth, or coherence, or power. 
There was no single belief to unite all classes in one faith. 
Nothing ennobling to trust in, no standard of right and 



THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 59 

wrong which could act on the moral nature. There were 
no recognised teachers. The moral and the material were 
hopelessly confused. The politicians had no system of 
morality, religion, or belief, and were void of moral 
authority, though they claimed to have a moral right. 
The philosophers and the moralists were hardly members 
of the state ; each taught only to a circle of admirers, and 
exercised no wide social influence. The religion of the 
people had long ceased to be believed. It had long been 
without any moral purpose ; it became a vague mass of 
meaningless traditions. 

With these threefold sources of corruption — war, 
slavery, false belief — the Roman empire, so magnificent 
without, was a rotten fabric within. Politically vigorous, 
morally it was diseased. Never perhaps has the world 
witnessed cases of such stupendous moral corruption, as 
when immense power, boundless riches, and native energy 
were left as they were then without object, control, or 
shame. Then, from time to time, there broke forth a 
very orgy of wanton strength. But its hour was come. 
The best spirits were all filled with a sense of the hollow- 
ness and corruption around them. Statesmen, poets, and 
philosophers in all these last eras were pouring forth their 
complaints and fears, or feebly attempting remedies. The 
new element had long been making its way unseen, had 
long been preparing the ground, and throughout the civil- 
ised world there was rising up a groan of weariness and 
despair. 

For three centuries a belief in the existence of one God 
alone, in whom were concentrated all power and goodness, 
who cared for the moral guidance of mankind, a belief in 
the immortality of the soul and its existence in another 
state, had been growing up in the minds of the best Greek 
thinkers. The noble morality of their philosophers had 



60 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

taken strong hold of the higher consciences of Rome, 
and had diffused amongst the better spirits throughout 
the empire new and purer types. Next the great empire 
itself, forcing all nations in one state, had long inspired in 
its worthiest members a sense of the great brotherhood of 
mankind, had slowly mitigated the worst evils of slavery, 
and paved the way for a religious society. Thirdly, an- 
other and a greater cause was at work. Through Greek 
teachers the world had long been growing familiar with 
the religious ideas of Asia, its conceptions of a superhuman 
world, of a world of spirit, angel, demon, future state, and 
overruling Creator, with its mystical imagery, its spiritual 
poetry, its intense zeal and fervent emotion. And now, 
partly from the contact with Greek thought and Roman 
civilisation, a great change was taking place in the very 
heart of that small Jewish race, of all the races of Asia 
known to us the most intense, imaginative, and pure : 
possessing a high sense of personal morality, the keenest 
yearnings of the heart, and the deepest capacity for 
spiritual fervour. In their midst arose a fellowship of 
devoted brethren, gathered around one noble and touch- 
ing character, which adoration has veiled in mystery till 
he passes from the pale of definite history. On them had 
dawned the vision of a new era of their national faith, 
which should expand the devotion of David, the spiritual 
zeal of Isaiah, and the moral power of Samuel into a 
gentler, wider, and more loving spirit. 

How this new idea grew to the height of a new religion, 
and was shed over the whole earth by the strength of 
its intensity and its purity, is to us a familiar tale. We 
know how the first fellowship of the brethren met ; how 
they went forth with words of mercy, love, justice, and 
hope ; we know their self-denial, humility, and zeal ; their 
heroic lives and awful deaths ; their loving natures and 



THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 6l 

their noble purposes ; how they gathered around them 
wherever they came the purest and greatest ; how across 
mountains, seas, and continents the communion of saints 
joined in affectionate trust ; how from the deepest corrup- 
tion of the heart arose a yearning for a truer life ; how the 
new faith, ennobling the instincts of human nature, raised 
up the slave, the poor, and the humble to the dignity of 
common manhood, and gave new meaning to the true 
nature of womanhood ; how, by slow degrees, the church, 
with its rule of right, of morality, and of communion, 
arose ; how the first founders and apostles of this faith 
lived and died, and all their gifts were concentrated in 
one, of all the characters of certain history doubtless 
the loftiest and purest — the unselfish, the great-hearted 
Paul. 

Deeply as this story must always interest us, let us not 
forget that the result was due not to one man or to one 
people — that each race gave its share to the whole : 
Greece, her intellect and grace ; Rome, her social instinct, 
her genius for discipline ; Judaea, her intensity of belief 
and personal morality ; Egypt and the African coast, their 
combination of Hellenic, Judaic, and Roman traditions. 
The task that lay before the new religion was immense. 
It was, upon a uniform faith, to found a system of sound 
and common morality ; to reform the deep-rooted evils of 
slavery ; to institute a method which should educate, teach, 
and guide, and bring out the tenderer, purer, and higher 
instincts of our nature. The powers of mind and of char- 
acter had been trained, first by Greece and then by Rome. 
To the Christian church came the loftier mission of ruling 
the affections and the heart. 

From henceforth the history of the world shows a new 
character. 

Now and henceforward we see two elements in civilisa- 



62 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

tion working side by side — the practical and the moral. 
There is now a system to rule the state and a system to 
act upon the mind ; a body of men to educate, to guide 
and elevate the spirit and the character of the individual, 
as well as a set of rules to enforce the laws and direct the 
action of the nation. There is henceforward the state and 
the church. Hitherto all had been confused ; statesmen 
were priests and teachers ; public officers pretended to 
order men's lives by law, and pretended in vain. Hence- 
forward for the true sequence of history we must fix our 
view on Europe, on Western Europe alone : we leave 
aside the East. The half-Romanised, the half-Christian- 
ised East will pass to the empire of Mohammed, to the 
Arab, the Mongol, and the Turk. For the true evolution 
of civilised life we must regard the heirs of time, the 
West, in which is centred the progress and the future of 
the race. Henceforward, then, for the ten centuries of 
the Middle Ages which succeeded in Western Europe the 
fall of the Roman empire, we have two movements to 
watch together — Feudalism and Catholicism' — 'the sys- 
tem of the state and the system of the church : let us turn 
now to the former. 

The vast empire of Rome broke up with prolonged con- 
vulsions. Its concentration in any single hand, however 
necessary as a transition, became too vast as a permanent 
system. It wanted a rural population ; it was wholly with- 
out local life. Long the awestruck barbarians stood paus- 
ing to attack. At length they broke in. Ever bolder and 
more numerous tribes poured onwards. In wave after 
wave they swept over the whole empire, sacking cities, 
laying waste the strongholds, at length storming Rome 
itself ; and laws, learning, industry, art, civilisation itself, 
seem swallowed up in the deluge. For a moment it 
appeared that all that was Roman had vanished. It was 



THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 63 

submerged, but not destroyed. Slowly the waters of this 
overwhelming; invasion abate. Slowly the old Roman 
towns and their institutions begin to appear above the 
waste like the highest points of a flooded country. Slowly 
the old landmarks reappear and the forms of civilised 
existence. Four centuries were passed in one continual 
ebb and flow; but at length the restless movement sub- 
sided. One by one the conquering tribes settled, took 
root, and occupied the soil. Step by step they learned 
the arts of old Rome. At length they were transformed 
from the invaders into the defenders. King after king 
strove to give form to the heaving mass, and put an end 
to this long era of confusion. One, at length, the greatest 
of them all, succeeded, and reared the framework of 
modern Europe. 

It was the imperial Charlemagne, the greatest name of 
the Middle Ages, who, like some Roman emperor restored 
to life, marshalled the various tribes which had settled in 
France, Germany, Italy, and the north of Spain, into a 
single empire, beat back, in a long life of war, the tide of 
invaders on the west, the north, and south, Saxon, North- 
man, and Saracen, and awakened anew in the memory of 
nations the type of civil government and organised society. 
His work in itself was but a single and a temporary effort ; 
but in its distant consequences it has left great permanent 
effects. It was like a desperate rally in the midst of con- 
fusion ; but it gave mankind time to recover much that 
they had lost. In his empire may be traced the nucleus of 
the state system of Western Europe ; by the traditions of 
his name, the modern monarchies were raised into power. 
He too gave shape and vigour to the first efforts of public 
administration. But a still greater result was the indirect 
effect of his life and labours. It was by the spirit of his 
established rule that the feudal system which had been 



64 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

spontaneously growing up from beneath the debris of the 
Roman empire, first found strength to develop into a 
methodical form, received an imperial sanction to its 
scheme, and the type of its graduated order of rule. 

What was this feudal system, and what were its results ? 
It may be described as a local organisation of reciprocal. 
duty and privilege. In the first place, it was a system of 
local defence. The knight was bound to guard his fee, the 
baron his barony, the count his county, the duke his duchy. 
Then it was a system of local government. The lord of 
the manor had his court of justice, the great baron his 
greater court, and the king his court above all. Then it 
was a system of local industry; the freeholder tilled his 
own fields, the knight was responsible for the welfare of his 
own lands. The lord had an interest in the prosperity of 
his lordship. Hence slowly arose an agricultural industry, 
impossible in any other way. The knight cleared the coun- 
try of robbers, or beat back invaders, whilst the husband- 
man ploughed beneath his castle walls. The nation no 
longer, as under Greece and Rome, was made up of scattered 
towns. It had a local root, a rural population, and complete 
system of agricultural life. The monstrous centralisation 
of Rome was gone, and a local government began. 

But the feudal system was not merely material, it was 
also moral; not simply political, it was social also — nay, 
also religious. The whole of society was bound into a 
hierarchy or long series of gradations. Each man had his 
due place and rank, his rights, and his duties. The knight 
owed protection to his men ; his men owed their services 
to him. Under the Roman system, there had been only 
citizens and slaves. Now there was none so high but had 
grave duties to all below ; none so low, not the meanest 
serf, but had a claim for protection. Hence, all became, 
from king to serf, recognised members of one common 



The connection of history. 65 

society. Thence sprang the closest bond which has ever 
bound man to man. To the noble natures of the northern 
invaders was due the new idea of personal loyalty, the 
spirit of truth, faithfulness, devotion, and trust, the lofty 
sense of honour which bound the warrior to his captain, 
the vassal to his lord, the squire to his knight. It ripened 
into the finest temper which has ever ennobled the man 
of action, the essence of chivalry ; in its true sense not 
dead, not destined to die — the temper of mercy, courtesy, 
and truth, of fearlessness and trust, of a generous use of 
power and strength, of succour to the weak, comfort to the 
poor, reverence for age, for goodness, and for woman; 
which revolts against injustice, oppression, and untruth, 
and never listens to a call unmoved. It is not possible 
that this spirit is dead. It watched the cradle of modern 
society, and is the source of our poetry and art ; it must 
live for future service, transformed from a military to a 
peaceful society. It may yet revive the seeds of trust 
and duty between man and man, inspire the labourer with 
dignity and generosity, raise the landlord to a conscious- 
ness of duty, and renew the mysterious bond which unites 
all those who labour in a common work. 

We turn to the Church, the moral element which per- 
vades the Middle Ages. Amidst the crash of the fall- 
ing empire, as darker grew the storm which swept over 
the visible State on earth, more and more the better 
spirits turned their eyes towards a Kingdom above the 
earth. They turned, as the great Latin father relates, 
amidst utter corruption to an entire reconstruction of 
morality ; in the wreck of all earthly greatness, they 
set their hearts upon a future life, and strove amidst 
anarchy and bloodshed to found a moral union of society. 
Hence rose the Catholic Church, offering to the thought- 
ful a mysterious and inspiring faith ; to the despairing 



66 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 






and the remorseful a new and higher life ; to the wretched, 
comfort, fellowship, and aid ; to the perplexed a majestic 
system of belief and practice — in its creed Greek, in its 
worship Asiatic, in its constitution Roman. In it we 
see the Roman genius for organisation and law, trans- 
formed and revived. In the fall of her material greatness 
Rome's social greatness survived. Rome still remained 
the centre of the civilised world. Latin was still the 
language which bound men of distant lands together. 
From Rome went forth the edicts which were common 
to all Europe. The majesty of Rome was still the 
centre of civilisation. The bishop's court took the place 
of that of the imperial governor. The peace of the 
church took the place of the peace of Rome ; and from 
the first, the barbarian invaders who overthrew the hollow 
greatness of the empire humbled themselves reverently 
before the ministers of religion. 

The church stood between the conqueror and the 
conquered, and joined them both in one. She told to 
all — Roman and barbarian, slave or freeman, great or 
weak — how there was one God, one Saviour of all, one 
equal soul in all, one common judgment, one common 
life hereafter. She told them how all, as children of one 
Father, were in His eyes equally dear; how charity, 
mercy, humility, devotion alone would make them worthy 
of His love ; and at these words there rose up in the 
fine spirits of the new races a sense of brotherhood 
amongst mankind, a desire for a higher life, a zeal for 
all the gentler qualities and the higher duties, such as 
the world had not seen before. Thus was her first task 
accomplished, and she founded a system of morality 
common to all and possible to all. She spoke to the 
slave of his immortal soul, to the master of the guilt of 
slavery. Master and slave should meet alike within her 



THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 6? 

walls, and lie side by side within her catacombs ; and 
thus her second task was accomplished, and she over- 
threw for ever the system of slavery, and raised up the 
labourer into the dignity of a citizen. Then she told 
how their common Master, of power unbounded, had 
loved the humble and the weak. She told of the simple 
lives of saints and martyrs, their tender care of the 
poorer brethren, their spirit of benevolence, self-sacrifice, 
and self-abasement ; and thus the third great task was 
accomplished, when she placed the essence of practical 
religion in care for the weak, in affection for the family, 
in reverence for woman, in benevolence to all, and in 
personal self-denial. 

Next, she undertook to educate all alike. She pro- 
vided a body of common teachers ; she organised schools ; 
she raised splendid cathedrals, where all might be brought 
into the presence of the beautiful, and see all forms of art 
in their highest perfection — architecture, and sculpture, 
and painting, and work in glass, in iron, and in wood, 
heightened by inspiring ritual and touching music. She 
accepted all without thought of birth or place. She gath- 
ered to herself all the knowledge of the time, though all 
was subordinate to religious life. The priests, so far as 
such were then possible, were poets, historians, drama- 
tists, musicians, architects, sculptors, painters, judges, 
lawyers, magistrates, ministers, students of science, en- 
gineers, philosophers, astronomers, and moralists. Lastly, 
she had another task, and she accomplished even that. It 
was to stand between the tyrant and his victim ; to succour 
the oppressed, to humble the evil ruler, to moderate the 
horrors of war; above all, to join nation to nation, to 
mediate between hostile races, to give to civilised Europe 
some element of union and cohesion. 

Let us think of this church — this humanising power 



6% THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

of the Middle Ages — as it was in its glory, not in its 
decay. Let us remember it as a system of life which 
for ten centuries possessed the passionate devotion of the 
foremost spirits of their time ; one which has left us a 
rich store of thought and teaching, of wise precept, 
lofty poetry, and matchless devotion ; as a system which 
really penetrated and acted on the lives of men. Let 
us think of it as it was in essence — in its virtues, not 
in its vices — truly the union of all the men of intel- 
lect and character of their age towards one common end : 
not like Egyptian priests, pretending to govern by law ; 
not like Greek philosophers, expounding to a chosen 
sect ; not like modern savants, thinking for mere love of 
thought, or mere love of fame, without method or con- 
cert, without moral guidance, without social purpose ; but 
a system in which the wisest and the best men of their 
day, themselves reared in a common teaching, organised 
on a vast scale, and directed by one general rule, devoted 
the whole energies of their brains and hearts in unison 
together, to the moral guidance of society ; sought to know 
only that they might teach, to teach only to improve, and 
lived only to instruct, to raise, to humanise their fellow-men. 
Let us think of it thus as it was at its best ; and in this 
forget even the cruelty, the imposture, and the degrada- 
tion of its fall ; let horror for its vices and pity for its 
errors be lost in one sentiment of admiration, gratitude, 
and honour, for this the best and the last of all, the organ- 
ised systems of human society ; of ail the institutions of 
mankind, the most worthy of remembrance and regret. 

But if we are generous in our judgment, let us be just. 
The Catholic system ended, it is most true, in disastrous 
and shameful ruin. Excellent in intention and in method, 
it was from the first doomed to inevitable corruption from 
the inherent faults of its constitution ; and its intellectual 



THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 69 

basis was so distorted and precarious, that it was stained 
with vices and crimes from the very first generation. It 
had trained and elevated the noblest side of human nature 
— the religious, the moral, and the social instincts of our 
being ; and the energy with which it met this, the prime 
want of men, upheld it through the long era of its corrup- 
tion, and still upholds it in its last pitiable spasm. But 
with the intellectual and with the practical sphere of man's 
life it was by its nature incompetent to deal. In its zeal 
for man's moral progress it had taken its stand upon a 
false and even a preposterous belief. Burning to sub- 
due the lower passions of man's nature, it had vainly 
hoped to crush the practical instincts of his activity. It 
discarded with disdain the thoughts and labours of the 
ancient world. It proclaimed as the ideal of human life 
a visionary and even a selfish asceticism. For a period, 
for a long period, its transcendent and indispensable 
services maintained it in spite of every defect and vice ; 
but at last the time came when the outraged instincts 
reasserted their own, and showed how hopeless is any 
religion or system of life not based on a conception of 
human nature as a whole, at once complete and true. 

The church began in indifference towards science and 
contempt for material improvement. Indifference and 
contempt passed at length into hatred and horror ; and it 
ended in denouncing science, and in a bitter conflict with 
industry. At last it had become, in spite of its better self, 
the enemy of all progress, all thought, all industry, all 
freedom. It allied itself with all that was retrograde and 
arbitrary. It fell from bad to worse, and settled into an 
existence of timid repression. Kence it came that the 
church, attempting to teach upon a basis of falsehood, to 
direct man's active life upon a merely visionary creed, to 
govern a society which it only half understood, succeeded 



yO THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

only for a time. It was scarcely founded before it began 
to break up. It had scarcely put forth its strength before 
it began to decay. It stood like one of its own vast cathe- 
drals, building for ages yet never completed ; falling to ruin 
whilst yet unfinished ; filling us with a sense of beauty 
and of failure ; a monument of noble design and misdi- 
rected strength. It fell like the Roman empire, with pro- 
longed convulsion and corruption, and left us a memory of 
cruelty, ignorance, tyranny, rapacity, and vice, which we 
too often forget were but the symptoms and consequences 
of its fall. 

We have stood beside the rise and fall of four great 
stages of the history of mankind. The priestly systems 
of Asia, the intellectual activity of Greece, the military 
empire of Rome, the moral government of Catholicism, 
had each been tried in turn, and each had been found want- 
ing. Each had disdained the virtues of the others ; each 
had failed to incorporate the others. With the fall of the 
Catholic and feudal system, we enter upon the age of mod- 
ern society. It is an age of dissolution, reconstruction, 
variety, movement, and confusion. It is an era in which 
all the former elements reassert themselves with new life, 
all that had ever been attempted is renewed again ; an era 
of amazing complexity, industry, and force, in which every 
belief, opinion, and idea is criticised, transformed, and ex- 
panded. Every institution of society and habit of life is 
thoroughly unsettled and remodelled ; all the sciences are 
constructed — art, industry, policy, religion, philosophy, 
and morality are developed with a vigorous and constant 
growth ; but, withal, it is an era in which all is individual, 
separate, and free : without system, or unity, or harmony, 
such as had marked the four preceding epochs. 

First, the feudal system broke up under the influence of 
the very industry which it had itself fostered and reared. 



THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. *J\ 

The great fiefs, as they became settled, gradually gathered 
into masses ; one by one they fell into the hands of kings, 
and at length upon the ruins of feudalism arose the great 
monarchies. The feudal atoms crystallised into the actual 
nations of Europe. The variety and dispersion of the feu- 
dal system vanished. A central monarchy established one 
uniform order, police, and justice ; and modern political 
society, as we know it, rose. The invention of gunpowder 
had now made the knight helpless, the bullet pierced his 
mail, and standing armies took the place of the feudal mili- 
tia. The discovery of the compass had opened the ocean 
to commerce. The free towns expanded with a new indus- 
try, and covered the continent with infinitely varied prod- 
ucts. The knight became the landlord, the man-at-arms 
became the tenant, the serf became the free labourer, and 
the emancipation of the worker, the first, the greatest 
victory of the church, was complete. 

Thus, at last, the energies of men ceased to be occupied 
by war, to which a small section of the society was now 
permanently devoted. Peace became in fact the natural, 
not the accidental, state of man. Society passed into its 
final phase of industrial existence. Peace, industry, and 
wealth again gave scope to thought. The riches of the 
earth were ransacked, new continents were opened, inter- 
course increased over the whole earth. Greeks, flying 
from Constantinople before the Turks, spread over Europe, 
bringing with them books, instruments, inscriptions, gems, 
and sculptures : — the science, the literature, and the in- 
ventions of the ancient world, long stored up on the shores 
of the Bosphorus. Columbus discovered America. The 
Portuguese sailed round Africa to India ; a host of daring 
adventurers penetrated untraversed seas and lands. Man 
entered at last upon the full dominion of the earth. Co- 
pernicus, Kepler, and Galileo unveiled the mystery of the 



J2 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

world, and made a revolution in all thought. Mathematics, 
chemistry, botany, and medicine, preserved mainly by the 
Arabs during the Middle Ages, were again taken up almost 
from the point where the Greeks had left them. The ele- 
ments of the material earth were eagerly explored. The 
system of experiment (which Bacon reduced to a method) 
was worked out by the common labour of philosophers and 
artists. For the first time the human form was dissected 
and explored. Physiology, as a science, began. Human 
history and society became the subject of regular and en- 
lightened thought. Politics became a branch of philosophy. 
With all this the new knowledge was scattered by the 
printing-press, itself the product and the stimulus of the 
movement ; in a word, the religious ban was raised from 
off the human powers. The ancient world was linked on 
to the modern. Science, speculation, and invention lived 
again after twelve centuries of trance. A fresh era of 
progress opened with the new-found treasures of the past. 
Next, before this transformation of ideas the church col- 
lapsed. Its hollow dogmas were exposed, its narrow prej- 
udices ridiculed, its corruptions probed. Men's consciences 
and brains rose up against an institution which pretended 
to teach without knowledge, and to govern though utterly 
disorganised. Convulsion followed on convulsion ; the 
struggle we call the Reformation opened, and led to a 
series of religious wars, which for a century and a half 
shook Europe to its foundations. At the close of this long 
era of massacre and war, it was found that the result 
achieved was small indeed. Europe had been split into 
two religious systems, of which neither one nor the other 
could justify its enormous pretensions. Admiration for 
the noble characters of the first Reformers, for their inten- 
sity, truth, and zeal, their heroic lives and deaths, the af- 
fecting beauty of their purposes and hopes, is yet possible 



THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 73 

to us, whilst we confess that the Protestant, like the Cath- 
olic faith, had failed to organise human industry, society, 
and thought ; that both had failed to satisfy the wants and 
hopes of man. More and more have thought and knowl- 
edge grown into even fiercer conflict with authority of 
Book or Pope ; more and more in Catholic France, as in 
Protestant England, does the moral guidance of men pass 
from the hands of priests, or sect, to be assumed, if it be 
assumed at all, by the poet, the philosopher, the essayist, 
and even the journalist ; more and more do church and 
sect stand dumb and helpless in presence of the evils with 
which society is rife. 

Side by side the religious and the political system tot- 
tered in ruin together. From the close of the fifteenth 
century, now one, now the other was furiously assailed. 
For the most part, both were struck at once. The long 
religious wars of Germany and France ; the defence by 
the heroic William the Silent of the free Republic of Hol- 
land against the might of Spain; the glorious repulse of 
its Armada by England ; the immortal revolution achieved 
by our greatest statesman, Cromwell; the battle of his 
worthy successor, William of Orange, against the oppres- 
sion of Louis xiv., were all but parts of one long struggle, 
which lasted during the whole of the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries — a struggle in which religion and politics 
both equally shared, a struggle between the old powers of 
Feudalism and Catholicism on the one side, with all the 
strength of ancient systems, against the half-formed, ill- 
governed force of freedom, industry, and thought ; a long 
and varied struggle in which aristocracy, monarchy, privi- 
leged caste, arbitrary and military power, church formalism, 
dogmatism, superstition, narrow teaching, visionary wor- 
ship, and hollow creeds, were each in turn attacked, and 
each in turn prostrated. 



/4 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

A general armistice followed this long and exhausting 
struggle. The principles of Protestantism, Constitution- 
alism, Toleration, and the balance of power, established 
a system of compromise, and for a century restored some 
order in the political and religious world. But in the 
world of ideas the contest grew still keener. Industry 
expanded to incredible proportions, and the social system 
was transformed before it. Thought soared into unimagined 
regions, and reared a new realm of science, discovery, 
and art. Wild social and religious visions arose and passed 
through the spirit of mankind. At last the forms and 
ideas of human life, material, social, intellectual, and moral, 
had all been utterly transformed, and the fabric of Euro- 
pean society rested in peril on the crumbling crust of the 
past. 

The great convulsion came. The gathering storm of 
centuries burst at length in the French Revolution. Then, 
indeed, it seemed that chaos was come again. It was 
an earthquake blotting out all trace of what had been, 
engulfing the most ancient structures, destroying all for- 
mer landmarks, and scattering society in confusion and 
dismay. It spreads from Paris through every corner 
of France, from France to Italy, to Spain, to Germany, 
to England ; it pierces, like the flash from a vast storm- 
cloud, through every obstacle of matter, space, or form. 
It kindles all ideas of men, and gives wild energy to all 
purposes of action. For though terrible, it was not deadly. 
It came not to destroy but to construct, not to kill but 
to give life. And through the darkest and bloodiest whirl 
of the chaos there rose up clear on high, before the 
bewildered eyes of men, a vision of a new and greater era 
yet to come — of brotherhood, of freedom, and of union, 
of never-ending progress, of mutual help, trust, co-opera- 
tion, and goodwill ; an era of true knowledge, of real 



THE CONNECTION OF HISTORY. 75 

science, and practical discovery ; but, above all, an era 
of active industry for all, of the dignity and consecration 
of labour, of a social life just to all, common to all, and 
beneficent to all. 

That great revolution is not ended. The questions it 
proposed are not yet solved. We live still in the heav- 
ings of its shock. It yet remains with us to show how 
the last vestiges of the feudal, hereditary, and aristo- 
cratic systems may give place to a genuine, an orderly, 
and permanent republic ; how the trammels of a faith long 
grown useless and retrograde may be removed without 
injury to the moral, religious, and social instincts, which 
are still much entangled in it ; how industry may be 
organised, and the workman enrolled with full rights of 
citizenship, a free, a powerful, and a cultivated member 
of the social body. Such is the task before us. The 
ground is all prepared, the materials are abundant and 
sufficient. We have a rich harvest of science, a profusion 
of material facilities, a vast collection of the products, 
ideas, and inventions of past ages. Every vein of human 
life is full ; every faculty has been trained to full efficiency ; 
every want of our nature is supplied. We need now only 
harmony, order, union ; we need only to group into a 
whole these powers and gifts : the task before us is to 
discover some complete and balanced system of life ; some 
common basis of belief; some object for the imperishable 
religious instincts and aspirations of mankind ; some faith 
to bind the existence of man to the visible universe around 
him ; some common social end for thought, action, and 
feeling ; some common ground for teaching, studying, or 
judging. We need to extract the essence of all older 
forms of civilisation, to combine them, and harmonise 
them in one, a system of existence which may possess 
something of the calm, the completeness, and the sym- 



y6 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 






metry of the earliest societies of men ; the zeal for truth, 
knowledge, science, and improvement, which marks the 
Greek, with something of his grace, his life, his radiant 
poetry and art ; the deep social spirit of Rome, its political 
sagacity, its genius for government, law, and freedom, its 
noble sense of public life ; above all else, the constancy, 
earnestness, and tenderness of the mediaeval faith, with 
its discipline of devotion to the service of a Power far 
greater than self, with its zeal for the spiritual union of 
mankind. We have to combine these with the industry, 
the knowledge, the variety, the activity, the humanity, 
of modern life. 



CHAPTER III. 

SOME GREAT BOOKS OF HISTORY. 

Of all subjects of study, it is History which stands 
most sorely in need of a methodical plan of reading. The 
choice of books is nowhere a more perplexing task : for 
the subject is practically infinite ; the volumes impossible 
to number ; and the range of fact interminable. There 
are some three or four thousand years of recorded history, 
and the annals, it may be, of one hundred different peoples, 
each forming continuous societies of men during many 
centuries. Many famous histories in one or two thousand 
pages cover at most about half a century : and that for 
the life of one nation alone. Macaulay's fascinating story- 
book occupied him, we are told, more years of labour to 
compose than, in some of its periods, the events occupied 
in fact. A brilliant writer has given us twelve picturesque 
volumes which almost exactly cover the life of one queen. 
The standard history of France extends to 10,000 pages. 
And it is whispered at Oxford that a conscientious annalist 
of the Civil War completes the history of each year in 
successive volumes by the continuous study of an equal 
period. At this rate forty thousand years would hardly 
suffice to compile the annals of mankind. 

In this infinite sea of histories, memoirs, biographies, 
and annals, how is a busy man to choose ? He cannot 
read the forty thousand volumes — nor four thousand, 
nor four hundred. Which are the most needful ? which 
period, which movement, which people, is most deserving 

77 



?S THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

of study ? When I say study, I am not thinking of 
students, but of ordinary fireside reading in our mother- 
tongue for busy men and women : men and women who 
cannot give their whole lives to libraries, who, 'like the 
ancient Greeks,' as Disraeli says, know no language but 
their own, and who are not going in for competitive ex- 
aminations — if, indeed, these islands still hold man, 
woman, boy, or girl who has never caught that mental 
influenza, the examination plague. Learned persons and 
literary persons (which is not always the same thing) are 
apt to assume that every one has of course read all the 
ordinary books ; they never speak about ' standard ' works, 
in every gentleman's library, but, alas ! not always in every 
gentleman's head. They give little help to the general 
reader, assuming that every schoolboy has the dynasties 
of Egyptian kings at his finger's end, and can repeat the 
list of the Popes backwards, as Macaulay did. No doubt, 
as schoolboys and schoolgirls, the week after we had 
'floored' that second history paper in the final, we could 
most of us perform these feats of memory. But many of 
us have forgotten these dates and names, have got rather 
mixed about our Egyptian dynasties, and are even some- 
what shaky with our Bourbons, Plantagenets, and Hohen- 
staufens. To those of us in such a case, it is tantalising 
to be dazzled by the learned with the latest cuneiform 
inscription, or the last newly excavated barrow, which 
finally decides the site of some ' scuffle of kites and crows ' 
in the seventh century. 

I propose to myself to speak about a few simple old 
books of general history, which to historians and the 
learned are matters of A B C ; just as Mr. Cook's obliging 
guides personally conduct the untravelled to Paris, Venice, 
and Rome. We are as ambitious and wide-roaming nowa- 
days in our reading as in our touring. The travelled 



SOME GREAT BOOKS OF HISTORY. 79 

world hardly considers it leaving home, unless it is bound 
for Central Asia, the Pacific, or Fusiyama. There are, 
however, still some fine things in the old country which 
every one has not seen ; and my humble task is simply 
to act as cicerone to those who seek to visit for the first 
time in their lives the great fields of eternal history, who 
have but limited time at their disposal, who could not find 
their way without a guide, and speak no foreign tongue. 

Without some organic unity in its conception, history 
tends to become literary curiosity and display, weakening 
our mental force rather than strengthening it. History 
cannot mean the record of all the facts that ever hap- 
pened and the biographies of all those whose lives are 
recorded ; for these are infinite. There is a type of book- 
man, most frequently met with in Germany, to whom the 
reading and the making of books seem to be functions of 
nature, as it is a function of nature for the cow to eat 
grass and to give milk ; men to whom it is a matter of 
absolute unconcern what is the subject of the book, the 
matter, origin, or ultimate use of the book, provided only 
the book be new. If a vacant gap can be discovered in 
the jungle of books where a spare hole can be filled, it 
matters no more to the author what end the book may 
serve, than it concerns the cow what becomes of its milk. 
The cow has to secrete fresh milk, and the author has to 
secrete a new work. And there is a type of historian to 
whom all human events are equally material. It is not 
the historian's concern, they think, to pick and choose, or to 
prefer one fact to another. All facts accurately recorded 
are truth : and to set them forth in a very big octavo volume 
is history. 

The true object of history is to show us the life of the 
human race in its fulness, and to follow up the tale of 
its continuous and difficult evolution. The conception of 



80 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

the progress of civilisation in intelligible sequence, is the 
greatest achievement of modern thought. History is the 
biography of civilised man : it can no more be cut into 
absolute sections than can the biography of a single life. 
And to devote our sole interest to some small period, 
country, or race is as rational as it would be to take a few- 
years to stand for the life-story of a great hero. That 
human history makes one intelligible biography does not 
imply that we have to load our memories with an intermi- 
nable roll of facts, dates, and names. This long record 
may' be grouped into a manageable series of dominant 
phases. To understand the spirit and character of each 
of these phases is the root of the matter. The events and 
persons are manifestations of that character, and serve to 
illustrate and vivify the spirit. History becomes 'the old 
almanack' which the dull cynic called it, when we treat it 
from the photographic, the local, the tribal point of view, 
instead of the human and the organic point of view. 

Neither recondite researches nor novel theories are 
needed to decide what are the leading epochs and domi- 
nant phases in general history. The world has long been 
agreed upon them, with some variations in detail, and 
modifications in the manner of subsections. For practical 
purposes they may be grouped into six. 

I. The Early Oriental Theocracies. — These are the 
great stationary systems, held together by dominant relig- 
ious discipline, and the pressure of social custom. The 
types of these are the Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian, and 
Indian theocratic monarchies, and the variations we find 
in the Chinese, Buddhist, Japanese empires, or to some 
extent in modern Mahometan kingdoms. These account 
for vast periods of history, and for far the largest portions 
of the planet. 



SOME GREAT BOOKS OF HISTORY. 8 1 

It is specially significant that the Fetichist, or spontane- 
ous Nature-worshipping epochs of human life, have no re- 
corded history ; although they form far the longest epochs 
in time, and are far the most extensive in space. History, 
in the sense of recorded fact, is one of the fine creations 
of Theocracy and the great sacerdotal state-organisations. 
The history of the Nature-worshippers has to be gathered 
from analogy, remnants, and extant tribes. It has neither 
record, names, dates, nor facts. 

II. The Rise and Development of the Greek World. — - 
This involves the story of the separate republics, of the 
intellectual activity, personal freedom, and individual self- 
assertion characteristic of the Hellenic spirit. If a sub- 
section were here inserted, it would be (II. b) the rise, 
development, and dissolution of Alexander's empire. 

III. The Rise and Consolidation of the Roman World. 
— The origin of the Republic, the formation of the dicta- 
torial system, the ultimate dissolution of the bifurcated 
Roman empire. Here also, if subsections were inserted, 
the period of a thousand years falls into two divisions : (a) 
that of the Republic, down to Julius Caesar ; (J?) that of 
the Empire, down to Justinian. 

IV. The Catholic and Feudal World: known as the 
Middle Ages. — This epoch, though it has the double 
aspect, Catholic and Feudal, cannot be grouped into divis- 
ions. For Catholicism and Feudalism are contemporary, 
co-ordinate, and indissolubly associated movements. They 
imply each other. They are converse phases ; but not suc- 
cessive or distinct epochs. 

V. The Formation and Development of the Great F?tro- 
pean States. — This includes the rise and growth of the 

F 



82 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

monarchies of modern times — the Renascence of Learn- 
ing, with Humanism, the Reformation, and what we call 
Modern History proper, down to the last century. 

This is one of the most complex of all the epochs : and 
it may properly be divided into subsections thus : — 

V.(tf) The rise and consolidation of the State System 
of modern Europe, with the intellectual and 
artistic revival that followed it. 

V.(£) The rise, issue, and settlement of the anti-Cath- 
olic Reformation, and the religious wars that 
it involved, down to the Peace of Westphalia. 

V.(V) The struggle between the monarchical and the 
republican principles in Italy, Switzerland, 
Spain, Holland, and England. 

V.(d) The great territorial and mercantile wars in 
Europe, and the struggle for the Balance of 
Power, down to the close of the Seven Years' 
War. 

VI. The Political and Industrial Revolution of the 
Modern World. — This would include the rise and consoli- 
dation of Prussia, of the United States ; the intellectual, 
scientific, and industrial revolution of the last century ; 
the French Revolution, and the wars that issued out of 
it ; the development of transmarine empires and interna- 
tional communication ; Democracy and Socialism in their 
various types. 

These six great phases of human civilisation may be 
mentally kept apart for purposes of clear thought, and as 
wide generalisations ; but some of them practically overlap, 
and blend into each other. And it is only whilst we keep 
our eyes intent on the world's stage, rather than some 
local movement, that these phases appear to be distinct. 
The vast ages of the Eastern and Egyptian Theocracies 



SOME GREAT BOOKS OF HISTORY. 83 

are separate enough both in time and in spirit. But the 
Greek and Roman worlds are to some extent contempo- 
rary, and at last they melt into one compound whole, when 
Rome incorporated Greece : its territory, literature, culture, 
and art. The whole mental apparatus, and finally the 
manners, of the empire became Greek ; until at last the 
capital of the Roman world was transferred to a Greek 
city, and the so-called ' Romans ' spoke Greek and not 
Latin. Thus we may, for many purposes, treat the Graeco- 
Roman world as one : and in fact combine the second and 
the third epochs. 

What we call the Mediaeval phase is very sharply marked 
off from its predecessor by the spread of Christianity ; 
and it seems easy enough to distinguish our fourth from our 
third epoch, both in time and in character. But this holds 
good only for Europe as a whole ; and it is not so easy, if 
we take Byzantine history by itself, to determine the point 
at which the imperial government at Constantinople ceases 
to be Graeco-Roman, and begins to be Mediaeval. Nor, 
indeed, is it quite easy to fix a date or a name, when the 
Papacy ceased to belong to the ancient world, and came 
to be the spiritual centre of the mediaeval world. Again, 
the modern world is very definitely marked off from the 
mediaeval, and we can with precision fix on the second 
half of the fifteenth century as the date of its definitive 
settlement. But if we keep our attention solely on the 
history of the church, of literature, or of thought, the dis- 
solution of the mediaeval world is seen to be preparing 
quite a century earlier than the taking of Constantinople 
by the Turks. 

Our sixth epoch, the age of the Revolution, is only the 
rapid and violent form of a process which has been going 
on since the general use of printing, of guns, and the era 
of ocean trade and accumulated wealth. It had been in 



84 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

operation in all the attacks on the Catholic doctrines and 
institutions, in the revival of ancient learning and the 
advance of science, in the consolidation of the European 
kingdoms ; and even long before in the labours of such 
men as Roger Bacon, Dante, Langland, Wickliffe, Huss, 
and Bruno. For these reasons the revolutionary agitation 
of the last century and a half, is nothing but the more 
intense and conscious form of the movement to found a 
new modern world which began with the decay of Catholi- 
cism and Feudalism. 

Therefore, if we are desirous of keeping in the highest 
generalisations of history, and indeed for many practical 
purposes, the six great epochs of universal history may be 
reduced to these four : — 

1. The Ancient Monarchies — or the Theocratic age. 

2. The Grceco-Roman world — or the Classical. 

3. The Catholic and Feudal world — or the Mediaeval. 

4. The Modern — or the Revolutionary world of Free 
Thought and Free Life. 

These dominant epochs (whether we treat them as six 
or as grouped into four) should each be kept co-ordinate 
and clear in our minds, as mutually dependent on each 
other, and each as an inseparable part of a living whole. 
No conception of history would be adequate, or other than 
starved and stunted, which entirely kept out of sight 
any one of these indispensable and characteristic epochs. 
They are all indissoluble ; yet utterly different, and radi- 
cally contrasted, just as the child is to the man, or the 
man to the woman ; and for the same reason — that they 
are forms of one organic humanity. 

It follows, that it is not at all the history of our own 
country which is all-important, overshadowing all the rest, 
nor the history of the times nearest to our own. From 



SOME GREAT BOOKS OF HISTORY. 85 

the spiritual, and indeed the scientific, point of view, if 
history be the continuous biography of the evolution of 
the human race, it may well be that the history of remoter 
times, which have the least resemblance to our own, may 
often be the more valuable to us, as correcting national 
prejudices and the narrow ideas bred in us by daily custom, 
whilst it is the wider outlook of universal history that 
alone can teach us all the vast possibilities and latent 
forces in human society, and the incalculable limits of 
variation which are open to man's civilisation. The history 
of other races, and of very different systems, may be of 
all things the best to correct our insular vanities, and our 
conventional prejudices. We have indeed to know the 
history of our own country, of the later ages. But the 
danger is, that we may know little other history. 

Thus one who had a grasp on the successive phases 
of civilisation from the time of Moses until our own day ; 
vividly conceiving the essential features of Egyptian, 
Assyrian, Chaldean, and Persian society ; who felt the 
inner heart of the classical world, and who was in touch 
with the soul of the mediaeval religion and chivalry — 
would know more of true history than one who was simply 
master of the battles of the seventeenth century, and 
could catalogue, with dates and names, the annals of each 
German duchy, and each Italian republic. No doubt, for 
college examinations, they wring from raw lads, as Milton 
says, ' like blood from the nose,' the details of the Saxon 
coinage, and the latest German theory of the mark-system. 
These things are essential to examinations and prizes, and 
the good boy will give his whole mind to them. But they 
are far from essential to an intelligible understanding 
of the course which has been followed in the marvellous 
unfolding of our human destiny. To see this, in all the 
imposing unity of the great drama, it is not enough to be 



86 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

crammed with catalogues of official and military incidents. 
It is needful to have a living sense of the characteristic 
types of life which succeeded each other in such glaring 
contrast, and often with such deadly hatred, through the 
dominant phases of man's society on earth. 

Our present business is to select a small choice of books 
of history, which are of permanent and daily resource to 
the general reader of English, and which have that charm 
and force of insight that no manual or school-book can 
possess. And we may begin with the fountain-head of 
primitive story, with the Father of history — Herodotus. 
Every one who reads seriously at all, every man, woman, 
and child who has ideas of any book above a yellow-covered 
novel, should know something of this most simple, fascinat- 
ing, and instructive of historians. In schools and colleges 
a thorough mastery of Herodotus has long been the foun- 
dation of a historical education. But he deserves to be 
the familiar friend of every sensible reader. 

This is the oldest volume of secular history that has 
reached us in anything like a complete state : and here in 
the earliest books of Herodotus we may watch the first 
naive expression of the insatiable curiosity of the Hellenic 
mind brought face to face with the primeval theocracies of 
the Oriental world. It is a source of perennial delight to 
observe how the keen, busy, inquisitive, fearless Greek 
comes up to the venerable monuments of the East, and 
probes them with his critical acumen. We may gather 
rich lessons in philosophy, and not merely lessons in his- 
tory and the story of man's progress, if we follow up this 
European, logical, eager, and almost modern observer, as 
he analyses and recounts the ways of the unchanging Past 
in Africa or in Asia. We seem to be standing beside the 
infant lispings of critical judgment, at the cradle of our 
social and political institutions, at the first tentative steps 



SOME GREAT BOOKS OF HISTORY. 8? 

of that long development of society which has brought us 
to the world of to-day. What a prolonged epic of revolu- 
tion in thought and in politics lay hid in such a phrase of 
Herodotus as this : ' The priests do say, but I think — ,' or 
in the tale of the map of Hecataeus, or the embassy of 
Aristagoras to the Greeks of the mainland ! We trace 
this Greek inquirer stepping up to these colossi of an 
incalculable antiquity, with the free and bold mind of a 
modern savant exploring an Egyptian tomb or some pre- 
historic barrow, combined it may be with no small measure 
of the ignorant and contemptuous wonder of the ruder 
conqueror. In Herodotus we see a bright and varied 
picture of the whole of the primitive types of civilisation, 
and the first stirrings of fiery aspiration in the genius of 
movement as it gazed into the motionless features of the 
genius of permanence embodied in the Sphinx of the Nile 
valley. 

It was the fashion once to disparage the good faith 
of Herodotus, and to ridicule his childlike credulity, his 
garrulous inconsequence, and his gratuitous guessing on 
matters both spiritual and physical. But there is now a 
reaction of opinion. And if Herodotus is not an exact 
observer nor a scientific reasoner, there is a disposition to 
admit more of foundation for some of his travellers' tales 
than was at first supposed. Nay, recent explorations and 
excavations both in Africa and in Asia have confirmed 
some of his most suspicious reports ; and, at any rate, we 
may follow those who think that he was doing his best with 
the sources of information before him. And it is clear 
that the earliest inquiries of all, in a field so vast and 
comprehensive, could only be made in a manner thus un- 
systematic and casual. Where scientific verification is 
not possible, it is well to have a variety of working hypoth- 
eses. Hearsay evidence, indeed, is anything but good 



88 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

evidence. But, where strict evidence is not to be had, it 
is useful, in great and decisive events, to collect all the 
hearsay evidence that is forthcoming at all. And this is 
what Herodotus did. He is no great philosopher in things 
social or in things physical. But he had that which the 
whole Eastern world and all the wisdom of the Egyptians 
could not produce, which the wealth of Persia could not 
buy, nor the priests of Babylon discover. He had that 
observant, inquisitive, critical eye that ultimately devel- 
oped into Greek philosophy and science — the eye that let 
slip nothing in Nature or in Man — the mind that never 
rested till it had found some working hypothesis to account 
for every new and striking phenomenon. It is the first 
dawn of the modern spirit. 

This most delightful of all story-books is abundantly 
open to the English reader. There are several transla- 
tions, and for some purposes Herodotus, whose style is 
one of artless conversation, may be read in English almost 
as well as in the Greek. In the elaborate work of Canon 
Rawlinson we have a good translation, with abundant his- 
torical and antiquarian illustrations by the Canon and by 
Sir Henry Rawlinson, with maps, plans, and many draw- 
ings. Herodotus preserves to us the earliest consecutive 
account that the West has recorded of the ancient em- 
pires of the East. And, although his record is both casual 
and vague, it serves as a basis round which the researches 
of recent Orientalists may be conveniently grouped, just 
as Blackstone and Coke form the text of so many manuals 
of law, in spite of the fact that both are so largely ob- 
solete. To use Herodotus with profit we need such a 
systematic Manual of Ancient History as that of Heeren. 
This book, originally published in 1799, and continued and 
corrected by the author down to the year 1828, although 
now in many respects rendered obsolete by subsequent 



SOME GREAT BOOKS OF HISTORY. 89 

discoveries, remains an admirable model of the historical 
summary. Unfortunately it requires so many corrections 
and additions that it can hardly be taken as the current 
text-book, all the more that the English translation itself, 
published in 1829 at Oxford, is not very easily procured. 
For all practical purposes, the book is now superseded by 
Canon Rawlinson's Manual of Ancient History, Oxford, 
1878, which follows the plan of Heeren, covers nearly the 
same period, and treats of the same nations. It is, in fact, 
the Manual of Heeren corrected, rewritten, supplemented, 
and brought up to that date, somewhat overburdened with 
the masses of detail, wanting in the masterly conciseness 
of the great Professor of Gottingen, but embodying the 
learning and discoveries of three later generations. 

But Egyptology and Assyriology are unstable quick- 
sands in which every few years the authorities become 
obsolete by the discovery of fresh records and relics. 
Professor Sayce, the principal exponent of the untrust- 
worthiness of Herodotus, assures us that Canon Raw- 
linson and his coadjutors have now become obsolete 
themselves, and that the history of the plains of the 
Nile and the Euphrates must again be rewritten. But 
the tendency to-day is, perhaps, inclined to treat the 
discoveries on which Professor Sayce .relies as neither so 
certain nor so important as he was once disposed to 
think. For the general reader it may be enough to rely 
on Max Dunker's History of Antiquity (6 vols., translated 
1878 ; see vols. i. and ii. for Egypt and Assyria). 

There is another mode, besides that of books, whereby 
much of the general character of Oriental civilisation may 
be learned. That is, by pictures, illustrations, models, 
monuments, and the varied collections to be found in our 
own Museum, in the Louvre at Paris, and other collec- 
tions of Oriental antiquities. Thousands of holiday-makers 



9 o 



THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 



saunter through these galleries, and gaze at the figures 
in a vacant stare. But this is not to learn at all. The 
monuments and cases, wall-paintings and relics, require 
patient and careful study with appropriate books. The 
excellent handbooks of our Museum will make a good 
beginning, but the monuments of Egypt and Assyria are 
hardly intelligible without complete illustrated explanation. 
These are, for Egypt, the dissertations, notes, and wood- 
cuts by various Egyptologists in Canon Rawlinson's 
English Herodotus; in Sir Gardner Wilkinson's great 
work on the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyp- 
tians, 1837; and his Handbook for Egypt, 1858. 

The facts, dates, persons, and incidents of Egyptian 
history are still the problems of recondite archaeology. 
The spirit of Egyptian civilisation may be grasped, without 
any copious reading, by any one who will seriously study 
instead of stare at the great Egyptian collections. Much 
may be learned, though in far less degree, by those who 
will study the Asiatic antiquities with such works as 
Layard's Nineveh, Fergusson's History of ArcJiitecture, 
Canon Rawlinson's Five Great Mojiarchies, and the dis- 
sertations in his English Herodotus. And much may be 
learned from Professor Sayce's Ancient Empires of the 
East, and from the. recent series of the Story of the 
Nations. These are unequal in execution, and avowedly 
popular and elementary in design : but they are plain, 
cheap, accessible to all, and contain the most recent 
general views. Brugsch's great History of Egypt, trans- 
lated 1 879- 1 88 1, is rather a book for the special student 
of history than for the general reader. 

It is not every reader who has leisure to master such 
a book as Rawlinson's English Herodotus. But some- 
thing of this fountain of history all may know. Even 
in such a pleasant boy's book as Mr. Church's Stories 



SOME GREAT BOOKS OF HISTORY. 91 

from the East and Stories from Herodotus we get some 
flavour of the fine old Greek traveller. There are three 
great sections of Herodotus which are of special interest: 

1. the history of the foundation of Cyrus' kingdom ; 

2. the books on the history, antiquities, and customs of 
Egypt ; 3. the immortal story of Marathon, Thermopylae, 
and Salamis. Literature contains no more enthralling 
page than the tale by the father of prose how the first 
great duel between the East and the West ended in the 
most momentous victory recorded in the annals of man- 
kind. Every educated man should know by heart the 
wonderful story : how the virtue of Aristides, the daring 
of Miltiades, the heroism of Leonidas, and the genius of 
Themistocles saved the infant civilisation of Western 
Europe from the fate which overtook the far more culti- 
vated races of Syria and Asia Minor. A distinguished 
Indian Mussulman, himself of the race of the Prophet, is 
wont to bewail the defeat of Xerxes as the greatest dis- 
aster in history. But for that, he says, the vanguard of 
civilisation would have advanced on Asiatic, and not on 
European, lines ; on Theocratic instead of Democratic 
principles. The theology of the learned Syed may be 
impeached ; but his history is sound. 

One other Greek book of history all should know, 
perhaps the greatest of all histories, that of the Athenian 
Thucydides. Now Thucydides was in pre-eminent degree 
what Herodotus was not — a strictly scientific historian ; 
one whose conception of the canons of historic precision 
has never been surpassed, against whom hardly a single 
error of fact, hardly a single mistaken judgment, has ever 
been brought home. Thucydides is much more than a 
great historian ; or, rather, he was what every great his- 
torian ought to be — he was a profound philosopher. His 
history of the Peloponnesian War is like a portrait by 



9 2 



THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 



Titian : the whole mind and character, the inner spirit 
and ideals, the very tricks and foibles, of the man or the 
age come before us in living reality. No more memorable, 
truthful, and profound portrait exists than that wherein 
Thucydides has painted the Athens of the age of Pericles. 
Athens in the age of Pericles, and under the guidance 
of Pericles, reached one of those supreme moments in 
the varying course of civilisation which, like the best 
dramas of Shakespeare or the Madonnas of Raphael, 
are incomparable creations of the human faculties stand- 
ing apart for ever. With all its vices, follies, and little- 
ness, nothing like it had ever been seen before, nothing 
like it can ever be seen again. It embodied originality, 
simplicity, beauty, audacity, and grace, with a fulness 
and harmony which the weary world, the heir of all the 
ages, can never recall. And in Thucydides it found 
the philosopher who penetrated to its inmost soul, and 
the artist who could paint it with living touch. How 
memorable are those monumental phrases which he puts 
into the mouth of his favourite hero or claims for his own 
work ! ' My history,' he says, 'is an everlasting possession, 
not a prize composition which is heard and forgotten.' 
'We men of Athens know how to cultivate the mind 
without losing our manhood, and to create beauty without 
extravagant costliness.' 'We count the man who cares 
nothing for the public weal as a worthless nuisance, and 
not simply an inoffensive nonentity.' 'All citizens take 
their share of the public burdens : all are free to offer 
their opinion in the public concerns.' 'We have no cast- 
iron system : every man with us is free to live his own 
life.' 'Life is harmonised by our civic festivals and our 
personal refinement.' 'The whole earth is the funeral 
monument of those who live a noble life : their epitaph is 
graven, not on stone, but on the hearts of men.' 



SOME GREAT BOOKS OF HISTORY. 93 

Thucydides, alas ! is not like Herodotus, easy to read and 
simple in his thought and language. His only, and very 
moderate, volume (a single copy of the Times newspaper 
contains as many words) is very close reading : crammed 
with profound thought, epigrammatic, intricate, obscure, 
and most peculiar in the turn of conglomerate phrase. 
But in the masterly translation of Dr. Jowett, and with 
the paraphrase and illustrations in the corresponding part 
of Grote's History of Greece, he may be read without diffi- 
culty by every serious reader. All at least should know 
his resplendent picture of Pericles, and the Periclean ideal 
of Athens, an ideal as usual only reached by a few exalted 
spirits, and by them, but for a moment of glowing inspira- 
tion — an ideal of which we have the grotesque obverse in 
the wild comedies of Aristophanes. All too should know 
the story of Cleon and of Alcibiades, the terrible scene 
of the plague at Athens, and the ghastly insurrection at 
Corcyra, and perhaps the most stirring of all, the over- 
throw of Athens in the port of Syracuse. I can remember 
how, when I read that within sight of the heights of 
Epipolae and the fountain of Arethusa, it seemed as if the 
bay around me still rang with the shout of triumph and 
the wail of the defeated host. It is surely the most 
dramatic page, yet one of the simplest and most severely 
impartial and exact, in the whole range of historical 
literature. 

For the remainder of Greek history after the defeat and 
decline of Athens we have no contemporary authorities 
of any value, except the Memoirs of Xenophon ; and for 
the marvellous career of Alexander, the best is Arrian, 
who at least had access to the works of eye-witnesses. 
And thus when we lose the light of Thucydides and 
Xenophon, we must trust to Plutarch and the later com- 
pilers, who had materials that are lost to the modern world. 



94 



THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 



Between Thucydides and Xenophon the analogy is strange, 
and the contrast even more strange. Both were Athe- 
nians, saturated with Attic culture, both exiles, both un- 
sparing critics of the democracy of their native republic ; 
but the first stood resolute in his proud philosophic neu- 
trality, whilst cherishing the ideal of the country he had 
lost ; the other became a renegade in the Greek fashion, 
the citizen of his country's natural enemy, and alienated 
from his own by temperament, in sympathy, and in 
habits. 

When these Athenian philosophers fail us, we had 
better rely on Curtius and Grote. Both have their great 
and special merits. And if the twelve volumes of Grote 
are beyond the range of the ordinary reader with their 
mountains of detail and microscopic exaggeration of minute 
incidents and insignificant beings, Curtius in less than a 
third of the bulk has covered nearly the same ground with 
a more philosophic conception. Strictly speaking, there 
is not, and cannot be, a history of Greece. Greece is 
scattered broadcast over South-eastern Europe and North- 
western Asia. Greece was not so much a nation as a 
race, a movement, a language, a school of thought and art. 
And thus it comes that any history of Greece is utterly 
inadequate without such books as Miiller's or Mahaffy's 
Literature of Ancient Greece, Winckelmann's History of 
Ancient Art, Fustel de Coulanges' Cite Antique, and 
Mahaffy's Social Life in Greece and Greek Life and 
Thought, or John Addington Symonds' delightful essays 
on Greek Poets and the scenery of Greece. 

The twelve volumes of Grote's History of Greece are 
neither manageable nor necessary for any but regular 
scholars of the original authorities. But there are sections 
of his work of peculiar value and well within the scope 
of the general reader. These are : the account of the 



SOME GREAT BOOKS OF HISTORY. 95 

Athenian democracy (vol. iv. ch. 31); of the Athenian 
empire (vol. v. ch. 45); the famous chapters on Socrates 
and the Sophists (vol. viii. ch. 67, 68), and the account of 
Alexander's expedition (vol. xii.). For the general descrip- 
tion of Greece, Curtius is unrivalled, and in many things 
he is a valuable corrective of Grote's pedantic radicalism. 
But it is a serious drawback to Curtius as a historian that 
with his purist Hellenic sympathies he treats the history 
of Greece as closed by Philip of Macedon, whereas in one 
sense it may be said that the history of a nation then only 
begins. The histories of Greece too often end with the 
death of Demosthenes, or the death of Alexander, though 
Freeman and Mahaffy have shown that neither the intel- 
lect nor the energy of the Greek race was at all exhausted. 
The German work of Holm, pronounced by Mahaffy to 
be amongst the very best, will soon be open to the English 
reader. 

The historians of Rome, with two exceptions, are too 
diffuse, or too fragmentary : such mere epitomes or such 
uncritical compilations, that they have no such value for 
the general reader as the great historians of Greece. Yet 
there are few more memorable pages in history than 
are some of the best bits from the delightful story-teller 
Livy. We cannot trust his authority ; he has no pretence 
to critical judgment or the philosophic mind. He is no 
painter of character ; nor does he ever hold us spellbound 
with a profound thought, or a monumental phrase. But his 
splendid vivacity and pictorial colour, the epic fulness and 
continuity of his vast composition, the glowing patriotism 
and martial enthusiasm of his majestic theme, impress the 
imagination with peculiar force. It is a prose JEneid — 
the epic of the Roman commonwealth from ^Eneas to 
Augustus. It is inspired with all the patriotic fire of 
Virgil and with more than Horatian delight in the simple 



$6 the meaning of history. 

virtues of the olden time. For the first time a great 
writer devoted a long life to record the continuous growth 
of his nation over a period of eight centuries, in order to 
do honour to his country's career and to teach lessons of 
heroism to a feebler generation. Had we the whole of 
this stupendous work, we should perhaps more fully respect 
the originality as well as the grandeur of this truly Roman 
conception. 

One of the abiding sorrows of literature is the loss of 
the 107 books, out of the 142 which composed the entire 
series. They were complete down to the seventh century : 
now we have to be content with the 'epitomes,' or general 
table of contents. But 35 books, a little short of one 
quarter of the whole, have reached us. In these times of 
special research and critical purism, the merits of Livy 
are forgotten in the mass of his glaring defects. Uncriti- 
cal he is, uninquiring even, nay, almost ostentatiously 
indifferent to exact fact or chronological reality. He 
seems deliberately to choose the most picturesque form 
of each narrative without any regard to its truth ; nay, he 
is too idle to consult the authentic records within reach. 
But we are carried away by the enthusiasm and stately 
eloquence of his famous Preface: we forgive him the 
mythical account of the foundation of Rome for the beauty 
and heroic simplicity of the primitive legends, and the 
immortal pictures of the early heroes, kings, chiefs, and 
dictators. Where the facts of history are impossible to 
discover, it is something to have epic tales which have 
moved all later ages. And we may more surely trust his 
narrative of the Punic wars, which is one of the most 
fascinating episodes in the roll of the Muse of History. 

She is still weeping bitter and silent tears for a loss even 
greater from the side of scientific record of the past. The 
Romanised Greek, Polybius, a thinker and patriot worthy 



SOME GREAT BOOKS OF HISTORY. 97 

of an older time, the wise and cultured friend of the second 
Scipio, wrote the history of Rome in forty books, for the 
seventy-four years of her history, from the origin of the 
second Punic war to the end of the third and the final 
overthrow of Carthage. It was the crisis in the fortunes 
of Rome, one of the most crucial turning-points in the 
history of the world. And it found a historian, who was 
statesman, philosopher, and man of learning, curiously well 
placed to collect trustworthy materials, and peculiarly en- 
dowed for just and independent judgment. In all the 
qualities of a historian but one, no other Greek but Thucyd- 
ides can be placed beside him. But five of his forty books 
remain entire. His dry and prosaic method has cost him 
immortality and robbed us of all but a small remnant of this 
most precious record. Of all great historians he is the one 
most wanting in fire and in grace. If we would contrast 
the work of a mighty master of narrative with that of a 
scrupulous annalist, we may read the famous scene in the 
Carthaginian senate, when the second Punic war is de- 
clared to the ambassadors of Rome, as it is told by Poly- 
bius, and then turn to the same story in the stirring pages 
of Livy. 

It is the fashion now to neglect Plutarch ; to our fathers 
of the last three centuries he was almost the mainstay of 
historical knowledge. His Greek is poor ; his manner gos- 
sipy ; his method uncritical ; and his credulity unlimited. 
But he belongs himself to the ancient world that he de- 
scribes. He is an ancient describing the look of the ancient 
heroes to us moderns. He was a moralist, not a historian, 
a painter of characters rather than a narrator of events. 
But with all this, Plutarch's forty-six Parallel Lives have 
a special value of their own. We must look on them as 
the spontaneous moralising of a fine old polytheistic 
preacher, recounting with enthusiasm the deeds of the 
G 



og THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

famous chiefs of Greece and Rome ; full of superstitious 
tales, traditional anecdotes, loose hearsay — by no means 
exact and critical history. The classical enthusiasm of the 
eighteenth century was nursed upon Plutarch's Lives'. In 
his simple pages the genius of the ancient world stands out 
in living reality. One who knew his Plutarch would un- 
derstand the genius of Greece and Rome better than if he 
knew a hundred German monographs. 

It is one of the cruel bereavements of Humanity that of 
his Lives no less than fourteen are lost ; those of the fore- 
most types of the ancient world. We have lost that of 
Epaminondas, the noblest of the Greeks, and of Scipio, the 
noblest of the old patrician chiefs. We have lost the life 
of Julius, and of all the earlier emperors ; and, perhaps 
worst of all, we have lost the life of Trajan, the greatest of 
the emperors : the emperor whom Plutarch knew in life, 
and of whose majestic life and empire we have the scantiest 
record of all. It is a melancholy and interesting coinci- 
dence that Trajan, one of the grandest figures of the an- 
cient world, to whom Plutarch dedicated one of his works, 
is almost unknown to us, though he may have been himself 
familiar with the Parallel Lives. History has strangely 
neglected to record the acts of one of the noblest of all 
rulers and the events of one of the most typical of all ages — 
mainly, it would seem, because his genius had given to his 
age such peace, well-being, and unbroken security. 

Although so large a part of Roman history is known to 
us only through Greek writers, Rome produced at least 
one historian who may be set beside Thucydides himself. 
Tacitus was a philosopher, who, if inferior to Thucydides 
in calm judgment and insight into the compound forces of 
an entire age, was even greater than Thucydides as a mas- 
ter of expression and in his insight into the complex invo- 
lutions of the human heart. The literature of history has 



SOME GREAT BOOKS OF HISTORY. 99 

nothing to compare with his gallery of portraits, with his 
penetration into character, his tragic bursts of indignation, 
his judicial sarcasms, and his noble elevation of soul. As 
a painter of character in a few memorable words, Thomas 
Carlyle alone amongst historians comes near him. But 
Tacitus is vastly superior in monumental brevity, in reti- 
cence, in simplicity, and in dignity. There are pages of 
Tacitus, where we must go to Shakespeare himself, to 
Moliere, Cervantes, Swift, or one of the great masters of 
character, to find the like of these dramatic strokes and 
living portraiture. 

Tacitus, it is true, presents us in his Histories and An- 
7ials with the inner, that is, the Roman side of the empire 
alone. And we must correct his view with that of the 
provinces — Gaul, Spain, Britain, as seen by the larger 
and wider world of the West which was absorbing Rome 
in ways little intelligible to the proud Roman himself. 
And Tacitus' strange parody of the history of the Jews 
may serve to remind us how apt is the wisest believer in 
his own type of civilisation to be blind to the new moral 
forces which are gathering up to destroy it. Of Tacitus 
we now have an excellent English version (Church and 
Brodribb, 3 vols., 1 868-1 877) ; and all solid readers who 
care for great historical pictures may know the trenchant 
judgment on the empire under Augustus and Tiberius, the 
noble portraits of Germanicus and of Agricola, and above 
all his masterly account of the German races, our sole doc- 
umentary record of the first stages in the civilisation of our 
Teutonic ancestors. 

It is of course necessary to have some continuous sum- 
mary of the history of Greece and Rome. We have 
already spoken of the general manuals of Heeren and of 
Rawlinson. For Greece, those who find Bishop Thirlwall's 
scholarly and sensible work too long, may content them- 



100 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

selves with the summary of Dr. Smith or Sir W. Cox. For 
Rome we have the admirable manual of Dean Merivale 
{General History of Rome, 1875) which condenses the his- 
tory of 1200 years in 600 pages. For the career of Julius 
Caesar and the foundation of the dictatorship which be- 
came the Roman empire, all should read the eleventh and 
twelfth chapters of Mommsen's History of Rome, in the 
fourth volume of the English translation. 

For the ancient world we have several well-known and 
familiar works, which take us into the heart of its politi- 
cal, military, and intellectual life : — Xenophon's Memoir 
of Socrates, Arrian's Persian Expedition of Alexander, com- 
piled in imperial times from original sources, Caesar's 
Co7nmentaries, and Cicero's Letters to his Friends. Xeno- 
phon, the fastidious and ambitious soldier who forsook 
Athens for Sparta, has given us the most faithful picture 
of Socrates, which is a revelation of the intellectual aspect 
of ' the eye of Greece ' in the great age. Arrian com- 
piled from the memoirs of eye-witnesses a truthful and 
complete picture of one of the most wonderful episodes in 
the history of mankind — the conquest of the East by the 
King of Macedon. Caesar was almost as great in letters as 
he was in war. His account of the Conquest of Gaid, one 
of the great pivots of general history, was famous from its 
first appearance for the exquisite purity of its language, its 
masterly precision of truthfulness, its noble simplicity and 
heroic brevity. It has served all after ages as the first 
Latin text-book, and describes for us one of the most mem- 
orable episodes in history, recounted by its principal actor, 
himself the greatest name in the history of mankind. We 
need not be admirers of Cicero as a man, nor partial to 
his type of eloquence, to enjoy the graceful gossip of his 
familiar correspondence, with its wonderful picture of the 
modern side of Roman civilisation. 



SOME GREAT BOOKS OF HISTORY. IOI 

No rational understanding of history is possible without 
attention to geography and a distinct hold on the local 
scene of the great events. Nor again can we to any ad- 
vantage follow the political, without a knowledge of the 
aesthetic and practical life of any ancient people. For 
the geography we need Spruner 's Atlas, or Freeman's His- 
torical Geography, Wordsworth's or Mahaffy's Travels in 
Greece, the first chapter of Curtius' History of Greece. Dr. 
Smith's Dictionaries of Antiquities and of Biography, A. S. 
Murray's History of Sculpture, or Liibke's History of Art, 
Middleton's Rome, Dyer's Pompeii, and our museums may 
serve for art. 

It is no personal paradox, but the judgment of all com- 
petent men, that the Decline and Fall of Gibbon is the 
most perfect historical composition that exists in any lan- 
guage : at once scrupulously faithful in its facts ; consum- 
mate in its literary art ; and comprehensive in analysis of 
the forces affecting society over a very long and crowded 
epoch. In eight moderate volumes, of which every sen- 
tence is compacted of learning and brimful of thought, and 
yet every page is as fascinating as romance, this great his- 
torian has condensed the history of the civilised world over 
the vast period of fourteen centuries — linking the ancient 
world to the modern, the Eastern world to the Western, 
and marshalling in one magnificent panorama the contrasts, 
the relations, and the analogies of all. If Gibbon has not 
the monumental simplicity of Thucydides, or the profound 
insight of Tacitus, he^has performed a feat which neither 
has attempted. ' Survfe-y mankind,' says our poet, 'from 
China to Peru ! ' And our historian surveys mankind 
from Britain to Tartary, from the Sahara to Siberia, and 
weaves for one-third of all recorded time the epic of the 
human race. 

Half the hours we waste over desultory memoirs of very 



102 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

minor personages and long-drawn biographies of mere 
mutes on the mighty stage of our world, would enable us 
all to know our Decline mid Fall, the most masterly survey 
of an immense epoch ever elaborated by the brain of man. 
There is an old saying that over the portal of Plato's 
Academy it was written, ' Let no one enter here, till he 
is master of geometry.' So we might imagine the ideal 
School of History to have graven on its gates, ' Let none 
enter here, till he has mastered Gibbon.' Those who find 
his eight crowded volumes beyond their compass might at 
least know his famous first three chapters, the survey of 
the Roman empire down to the age of the Antonines ; his 
seventeenth chapter on Constantine and the establishment 
of Christianity ; the reign of Theodosius (ch. 32-34) ; the 
conversion of the Barbarians (ch. 37) ; the kingdom of 
Theodoric (ch. 39); the reign of Justinian (ch. 40, 41, 
42) ; with the two famous chapters on Roman Law (ch. 
43, 44). If we add others, we may take the career of 
Charlemagne (ch. 49); of Mahomet (ch. 50, 51); the 
Crusades (ch. 58, 59, which are not equal to the first-men- 
tioned) ; the rise of the Turks (ch. 64, 65) ; the last siege 
of Constantinople (ch. 68) ; and the last chapters on the 
city of Rome (69, 70, 71). 

Gibbon takes us into mediaeval history, but he is by no 
means sufficient as a guide in it. The mediaeval period is 
certainly difficult to arrange. In the first place, it has 
a double aspect — Feudalism and Catholicism — the or- 
ganisation of the Fief and Kingdom, and the organisation 
of the Church. In the next place, these two great types 
of social organisation are extended over Europe from the 
Clyde to the Morea of Greece, embracing thousands of 
baronies, duchies, and kingdoms, each with a common 
feudal and a common ecclesiastical system, but with dis- 
tinct local unity and an independent national and pro- 



SOME GREAT BOOKS OF HISTORY. IO3 

vincial history. The facts of mediaeval history are thus 
infinite and inextricably entangled with each other ; the 
details are often obscure and usually unimportant, whilst 
the common character is striking and singularly uniform. 

The true plan is to go to the fountain-head, and, at what- 
ever trouble, read the best typical book of the age at first 
hand — if not in the original, in some adequate translation. 
I select a few of the most important : — Eginhardt's Life 
of Charles the Great ; The Saxon Chronicle ; Asser's Life of 
Alfred, which is at least drawn from contemporary sources ; 
William of Tyre's and Robert the Monk's Chronicle of the 
Crusades ; Geoffrey Vinsauf ; Joinville's Life of St. Louis ; 
Suger's Life of Louis the Fat ; St. Bernard's Life and Ser- 
mons (see J. C. Morison's Life) ; Froissart's Chronicle; 
De Commines' Memoirs ; and we may add as a picture of 
manners, The Pas ton Letters. 

But with this we must have some general and continu- 
ous history. And in the multiplicity of facts, the variety 
of countries, and the multitude of books, the only possible 
course for the general reader who is not a professed stu- 
dent of history is to hold on to the books which give us a 
general survey on a large scale. Limiting my remarks, as I 
purposely do, to the familiar books in the English language 
to be found in every library, I keep to the household works 
that are always at hand. It is only these which give us a 
view sufficiently general for our purpose. The recent books 
are sectional and special : full of research into particular 
epochs and separate movements. It is true that the older 
books have been to no small extent superseded, or at least 
corrected by later historical researches. They no longer 
exactly represent the actual state of historical learning. 
They need not a little to supplement them, and something 
to correct them. Yet their place has not been by any 
means adequately filled. At any rate they are real and 



104 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

permanent literature. They fill the imagination and strike 
root into the memory. They form the mind ; they become 
indelibly imprinted on our conceptions. They live : whilst 
erudite and tedious researches too often confuse and dis- 
gust the general reader. To the ' historian/ perhaps, it 
matters as little in what form a book is written, as it mat- 
ters in what leather it is bound. Not so to the general 
reader. To teach him at all, one must fill his mind with 
impressive ideas. And this can only be done by true lit- 
erary art. For these reasons I make bold to claim a still 
active attention for the old familiar books which are too 
often treated as obsolete to-day. 

There are four books on mediaeval history from which 
the last generation learned much ; though we can hardly 
count any of them amongst the great books of history. 
Hallam's Middle Ages is now seventy-five years old ; 
Guizot's Lectures on Civilisation in Europe is sixty-five 
years old ; Michelet's early History of France is sixty 
years old ; and Dean Milman's Latin Christianity is 
forty years old. They are all books that cannot be 
neglected ; even though it is true that modern research 
has proved them to have not a few shortcomings and some 
positive errors. Yet withal, I know no books in familiar 
use, from which the general English reader can learn so 
much of the nature of the Middle Ages as in these. 

Guizot's Lectures on Civilisation, in spite of its sixty- 
five years, in spite of the recent additions to all that we 
know of the origin of the feudal world, of mediaeval law 
and custom, of mediaeval sovereignty, still remains the 
most valuable short conspectus of the mediaeval system 
which the general reader has. His essay was the earliest 
attempt to explain by real historical research the great 
services to civilisation of the feudal monarchy and the 
Catholic Church, which Chateaubriand, Walter Scott, De 



SOME GREAT BOOKS OF HISTORY. IO5 

Maistre, and Manzoni had already embodied in romantic 
episodes or in trenchant controversy. It is of prime 
importance for the historian to be conversant with the 
affairs of state, or at least to pass his life amidst politicians 
and practical chiefs. This is the strength of Thucydides, 
Xenophon, Polybius, Caesar, Livy, Tacitus, De Commines, 
and we may almost add Hume and Gibbon. But amongst 
modern historians there is no more conspicuous example 
of this than Guizot, a large part of whose life was passed 
in office and in the Chamber. He writes of Charlemagne, 
St. Louis, and Philip the Fair, like a man who has had 
charge of the destinies of a great nation. A work of real 
historical insight may be supplemented or corrected by 
later research. But no industry in the examination of 
documents will ever make a useful compilation into a great 
book of history. 

Hallam's Middle Ages first appeared in 1818, and with 
Guizot's Lectures on Civilisation in Europe, ten years later, 
created* an epoch in historical study. But Hallam con- 
tinued to labour on his first work for thirty years and 
more of his long life ; and the complete shape of the 
Middle Ages dates from 1848. Since then much has been 
added to our knowledge, especially as to the organisation 
of feudal relations, both in town and country, in the 
history of the English constitution, and the land-system 
at home and abroad. But no book has filled the whole 
space occupied by Hallam with his breadth of view and 
patient comparative method. At present, perhaps, the 
most valuable portions of his work are the first four 
chapters on France, Italy, and Spain, and the concluding 
chapter on the state of society, much of which, it is true, 
may now be corrected by later research. The account 
of Germany is much better read in Mr. Bryce's Holy 
Roman Empire, that of the church in Dean Milman, and 



106 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

that of the English constitution in Bishop Stubbs. One 
of the main wants of historical literature now is a book 
on the Middle Ages which should cover the whole of 
Europe, in its intellectual, its spiritual, and its political 
side, with all the knowledge that we have gained from the 
researches of the last fifty years. Unhappily, it seems as 
if history were condemned to the rigid limits of special 
periods, as if the philosophic grasp were pronounced to 
be obsolete by indefatigable research. 

Michelet's History of France down to Francis I., although 
it is a collection of brilliant pensees, caracteres, and apercus 
rather than a continuous history, is a fine and stirring 
work of special value to the English reader. It is now 
sixty years old ; but a century will not destroy its living- 
inspiration. Hallam, the very antithesis of Michelet, one 
who was never once betrayed into an epigram or fired into 
poetry, has acknowledged in fit language the beauty and 
vigour of his French competitor. There are magnificent 
chapters on the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and four- 
teenth centuries ; and his picture of physical France, his 
story of Charles the Great, of Louis the Fat, Philip 
Augustus, St. Louis, Philip the Fair, of the Crusades, 
the Albigenses, the Communes, his chapters on Gothic 
architecture, on the English wars, and especially on 
Jeanne Dare, are unsurpassed in the pages of modern 
historical literature. Michelet has some of "the moral 
passion and insight into character of Tacitus, no little of 
the picturesque colour of Carlyle, and more than the patri- 
otic glow of Livy. Alas! had he only something of the 
patient reserve of Thucydides, the simplicity and precision 
of Caesar, the learning and harmonious completeness of 
Gibbon ! He is a poet, a moralist, a preacher, rather than 
a historian in the modern sense of the word. Yet with 
all his shortcomings (and his later work has but flashes 



SOME GREAT BOOKS OF HISTORY. IO7 

of his old force), Michelet's picture of mediaeval France 
will long remain an indispensable book. 

Dean Milman's Latin Christianity, which appeared forty 
years ago, just misses, it may be, being one of 'the great 
books of history ' — but will long hold its own as an almost 
necessary complement to Gibbon's Decline and Fall. It 
was avowedly designed as its counterpart, its rival, and 
in one sense its antidote. And we cannot deny that this 
aim has been, to a great extent, attained. It covers almost 
exactly the same epoch; it tells the same story; its chief 
characters are the same as in the work of Gibbon. But 
they are all viewed from another point of view and are 
judged by a different standard. Although the period is 
the same, the personages the same, and even the incidents 
are usually common to both histories, the subject is dif- 
ferent, and the plot of the drama is abruptly contrasted. 
Gibbon recounts the dissolution of a vast system : Milman 
recounts the development of another vast system : first 
the victim, then the rival, and ultimately the successor of 
the first. Gibbon tells us of the decline and fall of the 
Roman empire : Milman narrates the rise and constitution 
of the Catholic Church — the religious and ecclesiastical, 
the moral and intellectual movements which sprang into 
full maturity as the political empire of Rome passed through 
its long transformation of a thousand years. The scheme 
and ground-plan of Milman are almost perfect. Had he 
the prodigious learning, the superhuman accuracy of Gib- 
bon, that infallible good sense, that perennial humour, that 
sense of artistic proportion, the Dean might have rivalled 
the portly ex-captain of yeomanry, the erudite recluse in 
his Swiss retreat. He may not be quite strong enough 
for his giant's task. But no one else has even essayed to 
bend the bow which the Ulysses of Lausanne hung up on 
one memorable night in June 1787 in his garden study; 



108 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

none has attempted to recount the marvellous tale of the con- 
solidation of the Christianity of Rome over the whole face of 
Western Europe during a clear period of a thousand years. 

The whole of the closely-packed six volumes of Latin 
Christianity are possibly beyond the limits of many general 
readers. But we can point to those parts which may be 
best selected from the rest. The Introduction in the first 
book, and the General Survey which forms the fourteenth 
book at the end of the work, are the parts of the whole of 
the widest general grasp. To these we may add the chap- 
ters which treat of the greater Popes : Leo the Great in 
Book ii., Gregory the Great in Book til., Hildebrand in 
Book vii., Innocent the Third in Book ix., Boniface vm. 
in Book xi. — the chapters on Theocloric, Charlemagne, 
the Othos, the Crusades, St. Bernard, St. Louis — those 
on the four Latin Fathers, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, 
and Gregory, the monastic orders of St. Benedict, St. 
Dominic, and St. Francis — the Conversion of the Bar- 
barians, and the Reformers and Councils of the fifteenth 
century. As is natural and fortunate, the Dean is 
strongest and most valuable just where Gibbon is weakest 
or even misleading. 

In his Library, Auguste Comte recommended as the 
complement of Gibbon, the Ecclesiastical History of 
the Abbe Fleury. But it seems in vain to press upon the 
general reader of English a work in French so bulky, so 
unfamiliar, and so far removed from us in England to-day 
both in date, in form, and in tone. It was published in 
1690, more than two hundred years ago, and is in twenty 
volumes quarto, and only in part translated into English. 
It contains an excellent narrative, which was warmly 
praised by Voltaire. But it is entirely uncritical ; it is of 
course not on the level of modern scholarship ; and as the 
work of a prelate under the later reign of Louis xiv., it is 






SOME GREAT BOOKS OF HISTORY. I69 

naturally composed from the theological and miraculous 
point of view. The Abbe gives us the view of the Catholic 
world as seen by a sensible and liberal Catholic divine in 
the seventeenth century. The Dean has painted it as 
imagined by a somewhat sceptical and Protestant man of 
the world in the nineteenth. 

When we pass from Mediaeval to Modern History, we 
are confronted with the difficulty that modern history is 
infinitely the more intricate and varied, and that, as we 
advance, the histories become continually more and more 
devoted to special epochs and countries, and are minute 
researches into local incidents and chosen persons. The 
immediate matter in hand in this essay is to direct atten- 
tion to great books of history, meaning thereby those works 
which take us to the inner life of one of the great typical 
movements, or which in manageable form survey some of 
the great epochs of general history. Such surveys for the 
last four centuries are exceedingly rare. There are many 
valuable standard works, which are supposed to be in every 
gentleman's library, and which are familiar enough to every 
historical student. But they form a list that can hardly 
be compressed into one hundred volumes, and to master 
them is beyond the power of the average general reader 
to whom these pages are addressed. We can mention 
some of them : though they are hardly 'great books,' and 
neither in range of subject, in charm, or in insight, have 
they the stamp of Herodotus or Gibbon. 

I am accustomed to recommend as a general summary 
the Outline of Modern History by Jules Michelet. It is 
unsurpassed in clearness and general arrangement. It 
begins with the taking of Constantinople by the Turks in 
1453, and has been well translated and continued to our 
own day by Mrs. W. Simpson. I am also old-fashioned 
enough to rely on the Manual of a great historian,— 



tlO THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

Heeren's Political System of Europe which covers almost ex- 
actly the same ground, — though it is now more than eighty 
years old, not easily, procurable in the English form, and 
avowedly restricted to the political relations of the Euro- 
pean States. But its concise and masterly grouping, its 
good sense and just proportion, make it the model of a 
summary of a long and intricate period. But we must not 
ask more from it than it professes to give us. We shall 
look from it in vain for any account of the revolution 
directed by Cromwell or of the culture that gave splen- 
dour to the early years of Louis xiv. 

Summaries and manuals are of course made for stu- 
dents, and it would be vain to expect the general reader, 
who is not about to be ' extended ' on the ' mark-system,' 
and who, tired with work, takes up a volume at his fire- 
side, to commit to memory the dates and subdivisions 
which are the triumph of the examiner and the despair of 
the practical man. Records and summaries there must 
be, if only for reference and general clearness of heads. 
We must to some extent group our periods ; and, without 
pretending to very minute details, the following may serve 
for practical purposes, and are those which are commonly 
adopted : — 

i. The formation of the European monarchies and 
the rise of the modern State-System. 

2. The revival of learning and the intellectual move- 

ment known as the Renascence. This is syn- 
chronous with, and related to, the first mentioned. 

3. The Reformation and the great religious wars down 

to the middle of the seventeenth century. 

4. The dynastic, territorial, and colonial struggles 

from the Peace of Westphalia to the close of the 
Seven Years' War. 



SOME GREAT BOOKS OF HISTORY. Ill 

5, The struggle against autocracy in {a) Holland in 

the sixteenth century ; (J?) England in the sev- 
enteenth century ; (V) America in the eighteenth 
century. This is a special phase of the general 
movements noted as 3 and 4. 

6. The Revolution of the eighteenth century and its 

political, social, and industrial effects. 

We will take each of these six movements in their 
order : — 

I. For the first we have a book of established fame, 
now well entered on its second century, which still lives 
by virtue of its high powers of generalisation, its pellucid 
style, and sureness of judgment — Robertson's Charles V. 
In spite of the development of research in the last one 
hundred and thirty years, the famous Introduction or Sur- 
vey of Europe from the fall of the Roman empire to the 
fifteenth century remains an indispensable book, the ap- 
pendix, as it were, and philosophic completion of The 
Decline and Fall 

The volume on the Middle Ages is indeed one of those 
permanent and synthetic works which have been almost 
driven out of modern libraries by the growth of special 
studies, but it belongs to that order of general histories 
of which we are now so greatly in need. For the consoli- 
dation of States in Italy we must resort to Sismondi's 
Italian Republics, of which there is a small English abridg- 
ment ; for that of France to Michelet ; for Spain to Pres- 
cott's Ferdinand and Isabella ; and for England to Hallam's 
Constitutional History of England ; this, though fifty years 
have much impaired its value, still holds the field by its 
judicial balance of mind. For later authorities we must 
turn to the general Histories of England of J. R. Green 
and of Dr. F. Bright. But we can point to no work save 



112 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

that of Robertson which in one general view will give us 
the history of Europe in the sixteenth century. 

II. For the Renascence of Learning and Art, we have 
no better exponents than Burckhardt, Michelet, and Sy- 
monds. The German is full of learning and sound judg- 
ment ; the Frenchman has a single volume of wonderful 
brilliancy and passion ; the Englishman has produced a 
long series of works charged with learning and almost 
overloaded with ingenious criticism and superabundant 
illustration. But the Renascence is best studied in the 
biographies of its leaders, Lorenzo de' Medici, Columbus, 
Bruno, Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Rabelais, 
Erasmus, Ariosto, and Calderon — in the great paintings, 
buildings, inventions, and poems — in such books as those 
of Cellini, More, Montaigne, and Cervantes. A movement 
so subtle, so diffused, so complex can have no history. 
But its spirit has been caught and embalmed by Michelet 
in some hundred pages of almost continuous epigram and 
poetry. A sort of catalogue raisonnee presenting its versa- 
tile and ingenious force may be best collected from a study 
of Hallam's great work — The Literature of Europe in the 
fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. 

III. For the Reformation we rely on Ranke's History 
of the Popes, especially for Germany. For England the 
history has been adequately told both by Green and by 
Froude ; for Holland by Motley ; for France by Michelet. 
It is here of course that the most violent partisanship 
comes in to disturb the tranquil judgment-seat of history. 
History becomes controversy rather than record. The 
Catholic will consult the splendid polemical invective of 
Bossuet — The Variations of Protestantism. The Protes- 
tant will rely on the vehement impeachment of Merle 
D'Aubigne. 



SOME GREAT BOOKS OF HISTORY. II3 

IV. The dynastic, territorial, and colonial struggles 
from the Peace of Westphalia to the close of the Seven 
Years' War have been well summarised by Heeren in his 
Political System, by Michelet in his summary of Modern 
History, and by Duruy in his Histoire des Temps Mo- 
dernes. There is no book which can be said to enter 
into literature and gives an adequate picture of this period, 
unless it be Voltaire's Age of Louis xiv. and Louis xv. 
Lord Stanhope's Histories of Queen Anne and of England, 
Carlyle's Frederick the Great, H. Martin's Histoire de 
France, Lecky's excellent History of England in the Eight- 
eenth Century, are standard works for this period ; but 
they are all far too voluminous, too special, and diffuse for 
the purposes of the general reader, nor do they enter into 
the scheme of the present essay. 

V. Nor again is it possible to put into the hands of the 
general reader of English any single work which will give 
an adequate conception of the successive struggles for 
freedom in Holland, England, and America. They must 
be read in the separate histories, of which there are some 
that are excellent, though all of a formidable length and 
bulk. The nine volumes which Motley devoted in his 
three works on the struggle in Holland, the three works 
of Guizot on the English Revolution and its leaders, the 
standard work of Bancroft on the United States, form a 
series beyond the resources of the mere general reader as 
distinct from the student. 

There are, however, three works which, whilst being in 
form and in bulk within the compass of the average reader, 
give adequate portraits of the three noble chiefs of the 
Dutch, the English, and the American revolutions. Mot- 
ley's Rise of the Dutch Republic, Carlyle's Letters and 
SpeecJies of Cromzvell, and Washington Irving's Life of 
H 



I 14 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

Washington, are all indispensable books to one who desires 
to know the work of three of the great heroes of the 
Protestant republics. And these three are peculiarly 
suited for the biographical method. For not only were 
they each the undoubted chiefs of great historic move- 
ments, but they were all three men of singularly pure and 
magnanimous life, who each embodied the highest type of 
the age which they inspired. 

Carlyle's Cromwell has definitely formed the view that 
Englishmen take of their own history and even their view 
of their political system. It is one of the most splendid 
monuments of historical genius, for it reversed the false 
judgment which, for two centuries, political and religious 
bigotry had passed on the greatest ruler that these islands 
ever knew, and formally enthroned him on the love and 
admiration of all thinking men. It is needful to bear in 
mind that this great work is not a Life of Cromwell ; it 
was not so designed; it is not so in result. It is the 
materials annotated for a biography of Cromwell which 
Carlyle never wrote, and which is yet to be written. And 
it is essential to have alongside of this masterpiece of in- 
dustry and genius, a continuous history of the whole period 
from the accession of Charles 1. to that of William in. 
With all its defects, we shall find that told in the two 
works of Guizot — The History of the English Revolution 
and the Life of Cromwell — as they appear in two volumes 
in the English version. From the enormous detail of Mr. 
Gardiner's works on the period, and their still incomplete 
state, the general reader will be content to trust to the 
fine narrative as we read it in Green's Short History. If 
we hesitate to add to his Cromwell Mr. Carlyle's Friedrich 
the Second, it is on account of its preposterous length, its 
interminable digressions, its trivial personalities and tedious 
scandal ; because, with all its amazing literary brilliancy, 






SOME GREAT BOOKS OF HISTORY. 1 1 5 

it entirely omits to give us any conception of Frederick as 
a creative civil statesman, — though this is the character 
in which after ages will principally honour him. 

VI. For the Revolution of 1789 we have the wonderful 
book of Carlyle, perhaps the most striking extant example 
of the poetical method applied to history. It is an endur- 
ing book ; and it has now passed into its sixth decade and 
that immortality which, by copyright law, enables the pub- 
lic to buy it for a shilling. The poetical and pictorial 
method too often ends in caricature and gives tempting 
occasions for telling portraiture. And both in his loves 
and his hates, Carlyle has too often proved to be extrava- 
gant or unjust, and sometimes flatly mistaken in his facts. 
With all its shortcomings it is a great book : which, in 
literary skill, has not been surpassed by any prose of our 
century, and which, as historical judgment, has deeply 
modified the social and political ideas of our age. But as 
for the Cromwell we need a complement, if not a corrective, 
so we need it far more for the French Revolution. We 
may find it in Von Sybel's or in Michelet's French Revo- 
lution, or, better still, in the clear, judicial, and just sum- 
mary of Mignet. For the history of the Great War, we 
may turn to the abridged edition of Sir Archibald Alison's 
in a single volume, as fairly adequate and satisfactory. 
This avoids nearly all his besetting faults, and contains a 
very fair share of his undoubted merits. A far superior 
book, which takes in the whole period from 1792 to 1848, 
is the History of Modern Europe by the late A. C. Fyffe, 
too early lost to historical literature. 

For the growth of our social and industrial life in the 
present century — a subject of cardinal importance which 
must practically determine our political sympathies — it 
is too obvious that no adequate general account exists. 



Il6 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

Perhaps in the whole range of historical literature no book 
is more urgently needed than a real history of the develop- 
ment of industry and social existence in Europe in the 
present century. The movement itself is European rather 
than national, and social and economic rather than politi- 
cal. In the meantime we have no other resource except 
to follow up this complex evolution of modern society, 
both locally and sectionally. Of the various extant histories, 
the most important is Harriet Martineau's History of Eng- 
land from the Peace of 1815 ; perhaps the most generally 
interesting is Charles Knight 's Popular History of England, 
the later portions of which are less superficial and elementary 
than the earlier. The modern English histories of Spencer 
Walpole, Justin M'Carthy, and W. N. Molesworth are fair, 
honest, and pleasant to read. 

In these few notes on great books of history, it does not 
lie in my plan to say much about national or special his- 
tories. From my own point of view the life of Humanity 
in its fulness is the central aim of sound knowledge ; and 
that which substitutes the national for the human interest, 
that which withdraws the attention from organic civilisa- 
tion to special incidents, has been long too closely followed. 
There is always a tendency to concentrate the interest on 
national history ; and it needs no further stimulus. Nor 
are the details of our national history ever likely to pall on 
the intelligent reader. But histories on such a scale, that 
each octavo volume records but a year or two, and takes 
nearly as long to compose : on such a canvas, that every 
person who crosses the stage and each incident that occurs 
within the focus of the instrument, is recorded, not in the 
degree of its importance, but in the degree of the bulk 
that the accessible materials may fill — whatever may be 
their value, are beyond the purport of this chapter. 

The only aim of the present piece is to suggest to a 



SOME GREAT BOOKS OF HISTORY. \\J 

busy man a few books in which he may catch some con- 
ception of the central lines of human evolution. A true 
philosophy of human progress (if we could find it) would 
be a practical manual of life and conduct : and of such a 
philosophy, history in the larger sense must be the bible 
and basis. Mark, learn, and inwardly digest it, not as 
historical romance to pass a few idle hours, but as the 
revelation of the slow and interrupted, but unceasing 
development of the organism of which we are cells and 
germs. What we need to know are the leading lines of 
this mighty biography, the moral and social links that bind 
us to the series of our ancestors in the Past. The great 
truth which marks the science of our time is the sense of 
unity in the course of civilisation, and of organic evolution 
in its gradual growth. To gain a conception of this course 
we must set ourselves in a manly way to study, not the 
picture books of history, but the classical works as they 
came from the master hands of the great historians. 
Wherever it is possible we must go to the original sources, 
being sure that no story is ever so faithful as that told by 
those who themselves saw the great deed and heard the 
voices of the great men. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE HISTORY SCHOOLS. 
An Oxford Dialogue)- 

On one of those bright misty days at Oxford, when the 
grey towers are dimly seen rising from masses of amber 
and russet foliage, when reading men enjoy a brisk walk 
in the keen afternoon air, to talk over the feats of the 
Long and the chances of the coming Schools, a tutor and 
a freshman were striding round the meadows of Christ 
Church. The Reverend /Ethelbald Wessex, called by 
undergraduates ' the Venerable Bede,' was taking a tutorial 
grind with his young friend, Philibert Raleigh, who had 
come up from Eton with a brilliant record. The Admirable 
Crichton, as Phil was named by his admirers, was expected 
to do great things in the History School : his essay had 
won him the scholarship, and even the Master admitted 
that he had read some which were worse. Phil was en- 
larging on the lectures of the new Regius Professor. 

' We are in luck/ said he, ' to be reading for the Schools 
at a time when the Professor is one of the first of living 
writers ; his lectures are a lesson in English literature, 
instead of a medley of learned "tips." ' 

' I hope my dear boy,' said the Venerable, ' that you are 
not referring to the late Professor in that rather superficial 
remark of yours, for he was certainly one of the most con- 
summate historians of modern times.' 

1 Fortnightly Review, vol. 54, N.s. October 1893. 
118 






THE HISTORY SCHOOLS. 1 19 

' Oh, no,' said Phil, in an apologetic tone ; ' I never 
heard Dr. Freeman lecture at all, and I have not yet fin- 
ished the third volume of The Norman Conquest. But 
surely he is hardly in it as a writer with Froude, whose 
history one enjoys to read as one enjoys Quentin Durward 
or IvanJwe f ' 

'You are giving yourself away, dear boy,' replied the 
tutor, with his shrewd smile, ' when you class the History 
of England with a novel. Mr. Froude's enemies (and I 
am certainly not one of them) have never said worse of 
him than that. I am afraid that the first thing which 
Oxford will have to teach you is that the business of a 
historian is to write history, not romance.' 

' Of course,' said the freshman, a little put out by the 
snub, ' I should not compare the History of England to 
romance, nor, I suppose, do you. But we know that all 
the histories in the world which have permanent life are 
composed with literary genius, and are delightful to read 
in themselves. A great historian has to write history, but 
he also has to write a great book.' 

' Literature is one thing,' said the Venerable, in some- 
what oracular tones, ' and history is another thing. The 
reXos of history is Truth. She may be more attractive to 
some minds when clothed in shining robes ; but the his- 
torian has to worship at the shrine of nuda Veritas, and it 
is no business of his to care for the drapery she wears. 
What I mean is, that history implies indefatigable research 
into recorded facts. That is the essence : the form is 
mere accident.' 

' The form of the sentences may be a secondary thing,' 
pleaded the Crichton, 'but, surely, the vivid power of 
striking home which marks every great book is essential to 
a history intended to survive. Would the Master have 
given all that labour to Thucydides if the whole of his 



120 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

work had been occupied with monotonous accounts of how 
the Spartans marched into Attica, and how the Athenians 
sent seven ships to the coast of Thrace ? Thucydides is a 
KTrnxa eU cuei because of the elaborate speeches, the account 
of the plague, the civil war in Corcyra, the siege of Syra- 
cuse, and the last sea-fight in the harbour. These are the 
things which make Thucydides immortal, and remind one 
of the messenger's speech in the Persce. It is these mag- 
nificent pictures of the ancient world which help us to get 
over the wearisome parade of hoplites and sling-men, and 
battles of frogs and mice in obscure bays.' 

' This will never do,' replied the tutor. ' We shall quite 
despair of your class, if you begin by calling " wearisome " 
any fact ascertainable in recorded documents. The busi- 
ness of the historian is to examine the evidence for what 
has ever happened in any place or time ; and nothing 
which is true can be wearisome to the really historical 
mind.' 

' And are we expected to enjoy our Codex Diplomaticus 
as much as our Macaulay and our Froude ? ' 

'We do not ask you to enjoy,' said the Bede, in his dry 
way, ' we only ask you to know — or, to be quite accurate, 
to satisfy the examiners. The brilliant apologist of Henry 
viii. seems to give you delightful lectures ; but I can 
assure you that the Schools know no other standard but 
that of accurate research, in the manner so solidly estab- 
lished by the late Regius Professor whom we have lost.' 

1 Do you think that a thoughtful essay on the typical 
movements in one's period would not pay ? ' asked the 
Admirable one, in a rather anxious tone. 

'My young friend,' said the Reverend Ethelbald, 'you 
will find that dates, authorities, texts, facts, and plenty of 
diphthongs pay much better. You are in danger of mor- 
tal heresy, if you think that anything will show you a royal 



THE HISTORY SCHOOLS. 121 

road to these. If there is one thing which, more than an- 
other, is the mark of Oxford to-day, it is belief in contem- 
porary documents, exact testing of authorities, scrupulous 
verification of citations, minute attention to chronology, 
geography, palaeography, and inscriptions. When all these 
are right, you cannot go wrong. For all this we owe our 
gratitude to the great historian we have lost.' 

' Oh, yes,' said Phil airily, for he was quite aware that he 
was thought to be shaky in his pre-Ecgberht chronicles ; 
' I am not saying a word against accuracy. But all facts 
are not equally important, nor are all old documents of the 
same use. I have been grinding all this term at the His- 
tory of the Norman Conquest, verifying all the citations as 
I go along, and making maps of every place that is named. 
I have only got to the third volume, you know, and I don't 
know now what it all comes to. Freeman's West-Saxon 
scuffles on the downs seem to me duller than Thucydides' 
fifty hoplites and three hundred sling-men, and I have not 
yet come to anything to compare with the Syracusan expe- 
dition.' 

1 This is a bad beginning for a history man,' said Baeda. 
1 Is this how they talked at Eton of the greatest period of 
the greatest race in the annals of the world ? All history 
centres round the early records of the English in the three 
or four centuries before the first coming of the Jutes, and 
the three or four after it. Let me advise you to take as 
your period, say, the battle of Ellandun, and get up all 
about it, and how " its stream was choked with slain," and 
what led up to it and what came after it. Do you know 
anything more interesting, as you call it, than that ? ' 

' Yes,' said Phil readily, with all the recklessness of a 
smart freshman; 'why, Ellandun was merely the slogging 
of savages, of whom we know nothing but a few names. 
What I call fine history is Macaulay's famous account of 



122 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

the state of England under the Stuarts, or Froude's splen- 
did picture of the trial and execution of Mary of Scots. 
That is a piece of writing- that no one can ever forget.' 

'Ah, just so ! ' said the Venerable, in that awful mono- 
syllabic way which he had caught from the Master ; ' splen- 
did picture ! — piece of writing ! — fine history ! — here we 
generally take "fine history" to be — ah ! false history.' 

' But fine history need not be false,' said Phil. 

' We usually find it so,' replied his tutor, 'and it is ten 
times worse than false quantities in a copy of longs and 
shorts. There is no worse offence outside the statute book 
(and many offences in it are less immoral) than the crime 
of making up a picture of actual events for the sake of lit- 
erary effect, with no real care for exact truthfulness of de- 
tail. A historical romance, as they call novels of past ages, 
is often a souice of troublesome errors; but, at any rate, 
in a novel we know what to expect. It is a pity that Scott 
should talk nonsense about Robin Hood in Ivankoe, and 
that Bulwer introduced Caxton into the Last of the Barons. 
But no one expects to find truth in such books, and every 
one reads them at his own peril. In a history of England 
it is monstrous to be careless about references, and to trust 
to a late authority.' 

' But no decent historian ever does intend to state what 
he knows to be an error,' said Phil, somewhat surprised at 
the warmth of the West Saxon's indignation. 

'I should think not indeed,' said Wessex ; 'no one but 
a thief intends to take what is not his own, and no one but 
a liar means to state what he knows to be untrue. But 
the historian of all men is bound by the sanctities of his 
office to what we call in Roman law summa diligentia. 
And to be thinking of his "pictures," of the scheme of his 
colours and other literary effects, forms a most dangerous 
temptation to adopt the picturesque form of a story in 



THE HISTORY SCHOOLS. 123 

place of the recorded truth. Unfortunately, as we know- 
to our sorrow, the materials of the historian are of almost 
every sort — good, doubtful, and worthless; the so-called 
histories go on copying one another, adding something to 
heighten the lights out of quite second-rate authority ; a 
wrong reference, a false date, a hearsay anecdote gets into 
accepted histories, and it costs years of labour to get the 
truth at last. If you ever hope to be a historian, you must 
treat historical falsehood as you would a mad dog, and 
never admit a phrase or a name which suggests an un- 
truth.' 

1 Has not this purism been a little overdone ? ' said the 
innocent freshman. ' I remember that Freeman once told 
us he could not bear to speak of the Battle of Hastings, 
lest some one should imagine that it began on the sea- 
shore.' 

'A fine example of scrupulous love of truth,' replied 
the Bede, 'and I wish that all histories of England had 
been written in a similar spirit. Can anything be more 
unscholarly than a readiness to accept a statement which 
we have not probed to the core, simply because it works 
up into a telling picture, or will point an effective para- 
graph ? It is positively dishonest ! And some of them 
will quote you a passage which you discover, on collating 
it with the original, has a blunder in every sentence, and a 
mistranslation in every page. If you write a romance, you 
may go to your imagination for your facts. If you write 
j| history, you should scrupulously extract the best contem- 
j| porary record, and throw everything else into the fire. I 
I sometimes wish that histories were not published at all in 
1 the current English of literature, but were plain and dis- 
t connected propositions of fact, like the cuneiform inscrip- 
tions of Daryavush at Behistun.' 

'Surely,' cried Phil, with a laugh, 'that would be a 



124 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

little dull ! It would be a mere lexicon. No one could 
get up Facciolati or Littre as we get up Herodotus. Be- 
sides, the enormous number of propositions, each of which 
might fairly be called " truth," would make history impos- 
sible even for the most prodigious memory.' 

' You forget,' said the tutor, ' that we treat history in 
" periods " of short or, at any rate, of manageable length. 
Nobody has any business out of his own " period," and if he 
trespasses on to another man's " period," he is pretty cer- 
tain to be caught. The " periods " in our schools are far, 
far too long, and encourage superficial and flashy habits of 
reading. I remember dear old Bodley, late Professor of 
Palaeography, who was before your time, saying that ten 
years in the fourteenth century was about as much as any 
man should try to master. He died, poor old boy, before his 
great book was ever got into shape at all ; and perhaps ten 
years is rather short for a distinct period. But it takes a 
good man to know as much as a century, as it ought to be 
known. And one of our greatest living masters in history, 
with enormous industry and perseverance, just manages to 
write the events of one year in the seventeenth century 
within each twelve-months of his own laborious life.' 

Phil could stand this no longer. With a whoop and a 
bound (he had just won the long jump in his college sports) 
he cleared the broad ditch, and alighted clean in the 
meadow round which they were tramping. 

' Why,' he cried, as a second bound brought him back 
again to the side of his Venerable friend, ' at that rate we 
should want at least a hundred works, I suppose in ten 
volumes each, or a thousand volumes in all, cram full of 
gritty facts of no good to any one. All this week I have 
been entering in my note-book such bits as this : — " Ecg- 
frith marched to a place called the Hoar Apple-Tree. It 
is not known where this is, or why he went there. He left 



THE HISTORY SCHOOLS. 125 

it the next day, and neither he nor it are ever mentioned 
again in the chronicles." What is the good to me of know- 
ing that ? ' he asked, as if a cheeky freshman was likely 
to put the Reverend vEthelbald into a tight place. 

' Bad, bad ! ' said the tutor, who began to fear that he 
was wasting his time on Phil, ' you will never be a credit 
to your college if you can make game of "truth" like 
that ! One would think a young man who hoped to do 
something would care to know a few true facts about his 
English forbears a thousand years ago. But the question 
is not what you care to know, but what you ought to 
know ; and every Englishman ought to know every word 
in the Saxon Chronicle, to say nothing of the rest. Nor is 
it a question at all about your thousand volumes of history, 
the bulk of which deal with "periods" that do not con- 
cern you at all. Your thousand volumes, too, is a very 
poor estimate after all. You would find that not ten 
thousand volumes, perhaps not a hundred thousand vol- 
umes, would contain all the truths which have ever been 
recorded in contemporary documents, together with the 
elucidations, comments, and various amplifications which 
each separate truth would properly demand.' 

' But at this rate,' said the freshman gloomily, ' I shall 
never get beyond Ecgfrith and the other break-jaw Old- 
English sloggers. When we come up to Oxford we never 
seem to get out of an infinite welter of "origins" and 
primitive forms of everything. I used to think the Cru- 
sades, the Renascence, Puritanism, and the French Revo- 
lution were interesting epochs or movements. But here 
lectures seem to go round and round the Mark-system, or 
the aboriginal customs of the Jutes. We are told that it 
is mere literary trifling to take any interest in Richelieu 
and William of Orange, Frederick of Prussia, or Mirabeau 
and Danton. The history of these men has been ade- 



126 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

quately treated in very brilliant books which a serious 
student must avoid. He must stick to Saxon charters 
and the Doomsday Survey.' 

( Of course, he must,' said the tutor, 'if that is his 
" period" — and a very good period it is. If you know 
how many houses were inhabited at Dorchester and Brid- 
port at the time of the Survey, and how many there had 
been in the Old-English time, you know something definite. 
But you may write pages of stuff about what smatterers 
call the " philosophy of history," without a single sentence 
of solid knowledge. When every inscription and every 
manuscript remaining has been copied and accurately 
unravelled, then we may talk about the philosophy of 
history.' 

' But surely,' said Crichtonius mirabilis, ' you don't wish 
me to believe that there is no intelligible evolution in 
the ages, and -that every statement to be found in a 
chronicle is as much worth remembering as any other 
statement ? ' 

1 You have got to remember them all/ replied the Rev- 
erend ^Ethelbald dogmatically, ' at any rate, all in your 
" period." You may chatter about " evolution " as fast 
as you like, if you take up Physical Science and go to that 
beastly museum ; but if you mention " evolution " in the 
History School, you will be gulfed — take my word for it ! 
I daresay that all statements of fact — true statements I 
mean — may not be of equal importance ; but it is far too 
early yet to attempt to class them in order of value. Many 
generations of scholars will have to succeed each other, 
and many libraries will have to be filled, before even our 
bare materials will be complete and ready for any sort of 
comparative estimate. All that you have to do, dear boy, 
is to choose your period (I hope it will be Old-English 
somewhere), mark out your "claim," as Californian miners 



THE HISTORY SCHOOLS. \2J 

do, and then wash your lumps, sift, crush quartz, till you find 
ore, and don't cry " Gold ! " till you have had it tested.' 

This was a hard saying to his Admirable young friend, 
who felt like the rich young man in the Gospel when he 
was told to sell all that he had and to follow the Master. 
' I have no taste for quartz-crushing,' said he gloomily ; 
'what I care for are Jules Michelet on the Middle Ages, 
Macaulay's pictures of Charles n. and his court — (wonder- 
ful scene that, the night of Charles's seizure at Whitehall !) 
— Carlyle on Mirabeau and Danton, and Froude's Refor- 
mation and Armada. These are the books which stir my 
blood. Am I to put all these on the shelf ? ' 

1 Certainly ! put them away this very day till you have 
got your class and have gone on a yachting holiday : when 
you may put them in your cabin with Scott and Dumas,' 
said the Venerable, in his archiepiscopal manner. ' Let 
me advise you not to waste your precious hours with 
novels. Michelet, with his stale Victor-Hugo epigrams 
and his absurd references to the Bibliotheque Nationale — 
Cabinet de Versailles — portrait du Louvre — as if that 
was serious history. You might as well put the Trots 
Monsqnetaires in your list of books in the History School. 
Macaulay is all very well and a real reader, of course ; but 
he had always one eye on his sentences, and he would 
almost misquote a manuscript for the sake of a smart 
antithesis. There is far too much about French harlots ; 
but the worst vice of his book is, that it is amusing, which 
is the only real fault in Gibbon. Carlyle is good on 
Cromwell, though he is dreadfully prejudiced ; he had 
never seen the Clark Papers and consequently he has to 
be put right on a hundred points. And as to his French 
Revolution, it reads to me like an extract from Rabelais ; 
and what on earth can you have to do with the Encyclo- 
paedists, Girondins, Mountain, and Sans-culottes ? ' 



128 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

'Why, Oscar at Eton used to tell us, that no part of 
history was more essential than all that led up to the 
Revolution of 1789, and all that has led down from it to 
our present day, and John Morley says the same,' replied 
the unhappy fresher. 

' Oscar's a radical and John is a terrorist,' replied the 
Venerable, quite annoyed at the lad's pertinacity and his 
shallow turn of mind. 'The French Revolution is the 
happy hunting-ground of all the phrase-mongers like Car- 
lyle, the doctrinaires like Louis Blanc, the epigrammatists 
like Michelet and Taine, and the liars like Thiers and 
Lamartine. There is no history to be got out of it for a 
century or two, till all the manuscripts have been de- 
ciphered and all the rubbish that has been published is 
forgotten.' 

1 Well, but come,' said Phil stoutly, in his last ditch, 
'you will not bar Froude, who made up his history at 
Simancas, and got all his facts from unpublished manu- 
scripts ? ' 

' Simancas ! Facts ! Oh, oh ! ' laughed the Reverend 
yEthelbald, with his grim West-Saxon chuckle. ' Siman- 
cas indeed ! where, what, how much ? what volume or what 
bundle, what page, and what folio ? MSS. penes me — 
is a very convenient reference, but historians require a 
little more detail than this. I am not going to say one 
word against the Regius Professor, who is an old friend 
of mine and has written some very beautiful pieces ; but, 
when you talk about "facts," I must put you on your 
guard. If you never read the Saturday Review on 
Froude's Becket, you had better do so at once. They 
were telling a good story in Common Room the other day 
about the reviewer. He hated music, and so when he 
intended to send a smasher to the Saturday, he got some 
one to play him " The Battle of Prague," or the " Carnaval 



THE HISTORY SCHOOLS. I 2Q, 

de Venise," which would make him dancing mad, till you 
could hear the old lion's tail lashing his sides. I never 
went into the references myself — it is not in my period 

— but all I say is this — that if the references and cita- 
tions are as full of mistakes as the Saturday said (mind 
you, I only say if — for I take no part in the quarrel), it 
is worse than picking a pocket. People may wonder how 
it is possible for such things to be done by a dear old 
man whom we all love, who is the soul of honour in private 
life, and who says such beautiful things about religion, 
morality, and the ethics of statesmen. Well ! I don't 
know ; but in history you cannot trust a fellow who tries 
to be interesting. If he pretends to be "philosophical," 
you may know him to be an impostor. But, if he aims 
at being interesting or at anything like a fine picture, he 
is not far off saying the thing that is not.' 

' Come, now,' cried Phil with spirit, for he felt that 
his turn had come, 'you may talk about the Saturday 
articles, which are ancient history in the bad sense of 
the term, but what do you say to the Quarterly articles, 
and the palpable blunders it exposes ? What about 
Wace's "palisades" at Hastings? And why didn't Free- 
man cite the Abbe Baudri? And why did he misquote 
the Survey over and over again ? And why are we not 
to use the fine old English term, " Battle of Hastings " 

— the only name given in the Tapestry, Guy of Amiens, 
and the rest — and are told we must always use, if we 
value truth, the term, "Battle of Senlac " — a mere mythi- 
cal phrase — a piece of affectation of "dear old Orderic " 
in his Norman monastery ? Why, years ago a man in 
the Nineteenth Century pointed out that to talk nowadays 
of the Battle of Senlac was as absurd as if a Frenchman 
were now to try to rechristen the Battle of Waterloo the 
Battle of Hougoumont ! What do you say to the Quar- 

I 



130 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

terly on the Norman Conquest ? ' asked Phil impetuously, 
for he felt that he had got his knife into the Bede. 

'I am sure we need not mind all these anonymous 
personalities,' said the Venerable one somewhat stiffly, 
for he felt that the last Quarterly article was rather a 
nasty hit ; and as yet he had not the remotest idea how 
it ought to be answered. ' But here, bless me ! ' he 
cried, 'comes Middleman, of the House; what brings him 
to Oxford just now, I wonder.' And indeed, the tutor 
was not at all sorry that the conversation with his young 
friend should be suddenly broken off. 

' Dear old man, what luck for me to meet you,' said 
the newcomer genially ; ' I am going to examine in the 
Law School, and have run up for a couple of days to con- 
sult about the papers. I am staying with Bryce,' he 
explained. Jack Middleman, Q.C., was a young lawyer 
of much promise ; he was already in Parliament and had 
expectations of office when Lord Salisbury returns to 
power. Though he had been twelve years in good prac- 
tice, he kept up his reading and his love of Oxford. 
The Courts were not sitting, and he had run up to see 
some of the residents. 

' Our new scholar, Raleigh,' said Wessex, introducing 
Phil to the Q.C. ; 'he is attending the lectures of the 
Regius Professor of History, and I am trying to show 
him the difference between the late Professor and the 
present. You can tell him what Freeman was, for you 
used to be one of his ardent admirers and closest 
henchmen.' 

' Yes, indeed,' said Middleman ; ' he was a noble scholar, 
and I read and re-read every line he wrote. But there is 
a good deal to be said for the other method of work.' 

' Just so,' said Phil, much relieved. ' I have been 
sticking up for Froude's pictures of Henry viii., Eliza- 



THE HISTORY SCHOOLS. I3I 

beth and Mary of Scots, the Reformation and the Ar- 
mada. I won't believe that literary history is quite done 
yet.' 

' Literary history ! ' laughed Wessex, who had re- 
covered his good humour ; ' why not say melodious sci- 
ence ! — delicious philosophy ! — graceful law ! or any 
other paradoxical confusion of metaphors ? " Literary 
history" is a contradiction in terms, is it not, Middle- 
man ? ' 

' Well,' said the lawyer, who was great at Nisi prins, 
'let us know what we mean by literary history. History 
in which the narrative of events is made subservient to 
literary effect is an impudent swindle. But the history 
which has no quality of literature at all, neither power of 
expression nor imaginative insight, is nothing but mate- 
rials, the bricks and stones out of which some one one 
day might build a house. If " literary history" means 
Lamartine's History of the Girondists, it is a sneaking 
form of the historical novel. But if literary history means 
Tacitus and Gibbon, it is the highest and the true form 
of history. What have you been lecturing upon this term, 
Wessex ? ' 

'Well/ said the Venerable, 'for the last three terms 
we have been on the West-Saxon coinage, and the year 
before that I took up the system of frith-borrow! 

' I should like to hear your course on the legal and 
administrative reforms of the Norman Kings,' said the 
lawyer; 'it is a fine subject, from which we in the Temple 
might learn more than from Meeson and Welsby.* 

' I have not reached the Norman Conquest yet,' said 
the Reverend ^Ethelbald simply, 'for we have been ten 
years over the Old-English times ; but I hope to get down 
to Eadweard before I leave the college.' 

'You have got so fearfully grundlich since my time,' 



I32 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

said Jack, 'that I feel quite out of it at Oxford. History 
seems to be seen nowadays with some such apparatus as 
the naturalists describe the eye of a fly magnified to ten 
thousand diameters. Now, I used to think Gibbon to 
be the type of a great historian. He gives you in eight 
volumes the history of the civilised world, for a period 
not short of a thousand years, with a scholar's grasp of 
the recorded facts, a masterly insight into the leading 
movements, and a style that moves on like a Roman 
triumph in one unbroken but varied pageant. You have 
not given up Gibbon at Oxford, have you ? ' said the 
lawyer. 

'Ob, no,' replied the tutor; but he added with the 
scintilla of a sneer, ' Gibbon made some mistakes, you 
know ; and in the last hundred years a good deal has been 
discovered that he never heard of. I always warn our 
young people to read Gibbon with great caution, and never 
without their Muratori and their Pertz at hand. It isn't 
possible, is it,' asked the tutor in that sly way of his which 
so much frightened undergraduates, ' to put the true facts 
of a century into five hundred pages ? ' 

' You don't want all the facts,' said Jack decisively, 
' and you could not remember or use a tenth part of them 
if you could get them. And, what is more, you cannot 
get at the exact truth of every fact, however much you 
labour. Such minute accuracy in unimportant trifles is 
not only utterly unattainable, but it would be miserable 
pedantry to look for it.' 

' Trifles ! ' cried out the Venerable in horror ; ' you 
don't call any historical truths trifles, do you ? ' 

'Yes! I call it an unimportant trifle,' said Jack, 
'whether ^Elfgifu stayed one day or two days at Cant- 
warabyrig, and it is waste of time to discuss the question 
in fifty pages. You see that you cannot get at the exact 



THE HISTORY SCHOOLS. 1 33 

facts for all your pains. You know the row about Free- 
man's palisades at the Battle of Hastings. I pass no 
opinion, for I would not waste my time over such rubbish, 
and I don't care a sceat or a scilling whether there were 
palisades at Senlac or not. I daresay Freeman made slips 
like other people, possibly blunders — it would be a mira- 
cle if he did not. But all this fuss about his blunders, and 
much of the fuss he made about Froude's blunders, is 
poor fun. Freeman was a consummate historical scholar, 
and Froude is an elegant historical writer, and both have 
given us most interesting and valuable books, for which 
we ought to be truly grateful, however widely the two 
books differ in method.' 

' Does not Freeman overdo his love of the Old Eng- 
lish ? ' said Phil. 

' Is not Froude a blind advocate of Henry viii. ? ' asked 
the tutor. 

' Both of them, no doubt, have very strong personal 
feelings and keen party interests,' said the Q.C., 'and 
both might have been free from much of what the world 
calls their bias or their prejudice, if they had been accus- 
tomed to deal with history in a far more general or organic 
spirit as the biography of mankind ; and if both had not 
striven to unravel every incident in their limited periods, 
much as we seek to unravel the facts of a murder or a 
fraud. When we have a great trial in court, we have the 
living witnesses before us; we confront them with the 
accused ; we examine them on oath, we cross-examine 
them, and re-examine them ; and then my Lord sums up 
the evidence without any kind of feeling in the matter, 
and twelve jurymen have got to decide. Well, after all 
that, we know the jury do sometimes toss up for the 
verdict ; they are very often wrong, but we seldom hang 
the innocent man or let off a confirmed rogue. With all 



134 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

our pains, and the cross-examination of living witnesses, 
we are often beaten, and admit that we cannot get to the 
bottom of it. No lawyer would hope to find out the true 
story of anything if a witness could never be brought into 
court, and if no evidence could ever be sifted by cross- 
examination. But cross-examination is always impossible 
to the historian. You historians have only to rely on the 
most plausible story you can find in a bundle of old 
papers, the origin of which is usually doubtful. How can 
you extract anything that we should call legal evidence 
in court, and how can you get "at truth" by a method 
of investigation which any lawyer would tell you was 
ridiculous ? ' 

1 Do you mean to tell us that the facts of history are not 
to be discovered by competent research ? ' asked the tutor 
in dismay. 

' Certainly, the general facts of history are ascertainable 
in all their leading characters, if we are content to strike 
an average, or to look at sufficiently wide epochs and at 
the dominant tendencies and creative spirits. Research 
and insight together will enable you to grasp the main 
features of an age and the essential qualities of a great 
man. But no research and no insight, and no labour and 
no subdivision of labour will ever enable you to reach the 
literal and particular truth about every minor incident, or 
to penetrate to the inner motives and secret disposition of 
every man and woman who crosses the stage of history. 
We cannot do this for contemporary persons and events 
around us, with all the methods of inquiry which contem- 
porary facts and characters admit. Much less can we do 
it for distant ages, with nothing but the remnants of 
meagre and suspicious records. People are still disputing 
in the newspapers about the famous ball before the Battle 
of Waterloo, and why Bazaine surrendered Metz, and how 



THE HISTORY SCHOOLS. 1 35 

the Archbishop was killed or the Tuileries burnt down 
in the commune of Paris. If the exact truth of what 
happened a generation or two ago is often obscure whilst 
hundreds of eye-witnesses are»still living, how can you be 
certain whether Harold built a palisade at Battle or not ? ' 

' If he didn't,' cried Wessex, in a visible pet, ' I will 
give up Freeman and the Old English for ever ! ' 

' I have far too great admiration for Freeman,' said the 
young M.P., 'to stake his reputation on a matter of stakes. 
No ! Freeman was an indefatigable inquirer into early 
records, but he muddled away his sense of proportion. 
He was not a philosopher like Thucydides and Tacitus, 
nor a great writer like Robertson and Gibbon ; and he 
made the mistake of all specialists, that labour and minute- 
ness can do the work of imagination and insight. The 
microscopic eye, with its power of ten thousand diameters, 
will, after all, only show an infinite series of minute 
specks. It will not put them together, nor will it make an 
intelligible portrait of a whole. Froude is a fine writer, 
who has painted a set of brilliant scenes ; but to under- 
stand the great religious and intellectual forces of the 
sixteenth century in Europe requires a far larger range 
than is disclosed at Simancas, and a deeper philosophy 
than Carlyle's, which may be summed up as detestation of 
Popery and the people. A great history cannot be made 
either by microscopic analysis or by pictorial bravura. 
The palaeo-photo-graphic method only gives you a shape- 
less pile of separate bricks. The chiaroscuro-impressionist 
method will give you some glowing pictures; but then 
wicked people start up and say they are not true, and not 
fair.' 

'What method, then, has to be followed by any great 
history?' cried out in the same breath the tutor and the 
freshman. 



I36 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 



'Well, what I would advise a yjpung man going into the 
historical line to bespeak is — firfet, indefatigable research 
into all the accessible materials ; secondly, a sound philos- 
ophy of human Solution ;^feifdly,.a genius for seizing on 
the typical movements and the great men ; and lastly, the 
power of a true artist in grouping subjects and in describ- 
ing typical men and evC*its> All four are necessary ; and 
you seem to think at Oxford that the first is enough with- 
out the rest. But, unless you^h'ave a real philosophy of 
history, you have nothing bwt^our own likings and dis- 
likings to direct your judgment!, of men and movements. 
Unless you have the insight fe> select and classify, your 
facts, you and your readers will, be lost in a sea of details. 
Not one fact in a hundred is w~brth preservation, just as 
biology could only exist as a science by judicious selection 
of typical forms. To do anything else is to assume that 
induction could take place in logic, as Aldrich says, per 
enumerationem simplicem. And lastly, unless you can 
impress on your readers' minds a vivid idea of some given 
world or some representative man, you will only send 
them to sleep. If the historical romance can do nothing 
but mislead, the historical ditch-water will only disgust.' 

' And who ever united all these four qualifications ? ' said 
the tutor. 

' Why, Gibbon did, or very nearly, and that is his 
supreme merit. He was as learned as Mommsen, and as 
accurate as Freeman ; he had something of the philosophy 
of Hume, and almost as much critical judgment as Robert- 
son ; and he was nearly as great an artist as Herodotus or 
Livy. Mommsen's Rome might be put beside Gibbon's 
for its learning, insight, judgment, and concentration had 
he only a spark of Gibbon's fire and art. But as a German, 
how could we expect it from him ? Henri Martin's France 
might be named with Gibbon's Rome if the worthy French- 



THE HISTORY SCHOOLS. 1 37 

man had been equal to six volumes instead of sixteen. 
Grote's Greece is a fine book, but, like Freeman, he is 
overwhelmed in the volume of his own minutiae and his 
extravagant passion for his Chosen People.' 

' And is that the whole of the list you could make of the 
really good histories ? ' asked the tutor. 

' Not at all,' replied the lawyer ; ' there are plenty of 
good books — but I should hardly call anv of them great 
by the side of Gibbon. There is Milman's Latin Chris- 
tianity, and Curtius and Dunker, Thirl wall's Greece, Meri- 
vale's Rome, Michelet's France, Finlay's Greece, Carlyle's 
Cromwell, and Ranke's Popes, Duruy's Rome, Green's 
Short History, and a dozen more, not to weary you with a 
catalogue. But they all, no doubt, have their limitations. 
Some are not adequately critical ; some fall short in real 
study ; some are more or less perverse ; and some are 
indifferent artists.' 

' Not one of them can be put beside the Norman Con- 
quest for profound research,' cried Wessex. 

' Nor beside Froude for beauty of style,' cried Phil. 

'Well, I admire both, as I tell you,' said Jack, 'but I 
doubt if the method of either is destined to give us much 
more in the future. The vast accumulation of historical 
material is an excellent and essential thing. But to deluge 
the world with mere extracts and translations of these un- 
digested documents, as the host of Freemanikins threaten 
to do, is a dismal outlook. If the history of the world is 
to be written on that scale, the British Museum will not 
contain the books that shall be written. And no human 
intellect could master or use them when they were written. 
On the other hand, the pictorial method is constantly seduc- 
ing its votaries into inaccurate, garbled, and over-coloured 
pictures. We want more concentration, greater breadth, 
a higher philosophy.' 



I38 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

'You speak as if history were played out,' said the 
Bede. 

' It has to be put upon a new footing, I firmly believe,' 
said the politician. ' History is only one department of 
Sociology, just as Natural History is the descriptive part 
of Biology. And History will have to be brought most 
strictly under the guidance and inspiration of Social Phi- 
losophy. The day of the chronicler is past ; the day of the 
litterateur is past. The field of knowledge is too vast for 
the whole of the facts to be set forth, or a tenth of them. 
To confine ourselves to " periods " is to destroy our sense 
of unity and proportion, and to weaken our brain by ceas- 
ing to regard history as the handmaid and instrument of 
Social Philosophy. Excerpts from ten thousand chronicles 
are useful as dictionaries and collections, but they are a 
mere nuisance as continuous histories. It may be that 
Gibbon's masterpiece is destined to be the last example of 
that rarest of combinations — profound scholarship with 
splendid art. Since his age there has grown up a sense of 
the unity of human evolution and a solid philosophy of 
society. The histories of the future will, no doubt, fill up 
and complete, illustrate, and correct, that general plan of 
the biography of humanity. They will follow, more likely, 
the method of Mommsen in his Roman Provinces, or Bishop 
Stubbs's Constitutional History — the fine old way of 
Heeren, Hallam, Guizot ; they group movements and forces, 
rather than narrate events. They will no longer chronicle 
small beer or paint melodramatic scenes. They will illus- 
trate philosophy.' 

' Well, good-bye, Wessex,' said Jack ; ' I hope that next 
time we meet, you will have got on to the Norman Kings — 
they were worth a score of Ecgberhts — and I hope my 
young friend here will one day write another prize essay 
fit to compare with the Holy Roman Empire. I must be 
off : the Magdalen bells have begun,' 



CHAPTER V. 

A SURVEY OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 1 

He who would understand the Middle Ages must make 
a special study of the thirteenth century — one of the 
landmarks between the ancient and the modern world, one 
of the most pregnant, most organic, most memorable, in 
the annals of mankind. It is an epoch (perhaps the last 
of the centuries of which this can be said) crowded with 
names illustrious in action, in thought, in art, in religion 
equally ; which is big with those problems, intellectual, 
social, political, and spiritual that six succeeding centuries 
have in vain toiled to solve. 

A ' Century ' is, of course, a purely arbitrary limit of 

time. But for practical purposes we can only reckon by 

years and groups of years. And, as in the biography of a 

man, we speak of the happy years of a life, or a decade of 

great activity, so it is convenient to speak of a brilliant 

' century,' if we attach no mysterious value to our artificial 

measure of time. It happens, however, that the thirteenth 

century not only has a really distinctive character of its 

e own, but that, near to its beginning and to its close, very 

.typical events occurred. In 1198 took place the election 

of Innocent in., the most successful, perhaps the most 

truly representative name, of all the mediaeval popes. In 

the year preceding (1197) we may see the Empire visibly 

n beginning to change its spirit with the death of Henry vi., 

the ferocious son of Barbarossa. In the year following 

1 Fortnightly Revieiv, vol. 50, N.s. September 1 891. 
139 



I4O THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

(1199) died Richard Lion-heart, the last of the Anglo- 
French sovereigns, and, we may say, the last of the genuine 
Crusader kings, to be succeeded by his brother John, who 
was happily forced to become an English king, and to 
found the Constitution of England by signing the Great 
Charter. 

And at the end of the century, its last year (1300) is 
the date of the ominous 'Jubilee' of the Papacy — the 
year in which Dante places his great poem — a year which 
is one of the most convenient points in the memoria tech- 
nicaoi modern history. Three years later died Boniface 
viii., after the tremendous humiliation which marked the 
manifest decadence of the Papacy ; eight years later began 
the ' Babylonish Captivity,' the seventy years' exile of the 
Papacy at Avignon ; then came the ruin of the Templars 
throughout Europe, and all the tragedies and convulsions 
which mark the reigns of Philip the Fair in France, Edward 
11. in England, and the confusion that overtook the Empire 
on the death of Henry of Luxembourg, that last hope of 
imperial ambition. Thus, taking the period between the 
election of Innocent in., in 1198, and the removal of the 
Papacy to Avignon, in 1308, we find a very definite char- 
acter in the thirteenth century. It would, of course, be 
necessary to fix the view on Europe as a whole, or rather 
on Latin Christendom, to obtain any unity of conception ; 
and, obviously, the development and decay of the Church 
must be the central point, for this is at once the most 
general and the important element in the common life of 
Christendom. 

Within the limits of the thirteenth century, so under- 
stood, a series of striking events and great names is crowded 
— the growth, culmination, extravagance, and then the 
humiliation of the Papal See ; the eighteen years' rule of 
Innocent in., the fourteen years of Gregory ix., the twenty- 



A SURVEY OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. I4I 

one of Innocent iv. ; the short revival of Gregory x. ; the 
ambition, the pride, the degradation, and shame of Boni- 
face viii. The great experiment to organise Christendom 
under a single spiritual sovereign had been made by some 
of the most aspiring natures, and the most consummate 
politicians who ever wore mitre — had been made and 
failed. When the Popes returned from Avignon to Rome 
in 1378, after the seventy years of exile from their capital, 
it was to find the Catholic world rent with schism, a series 
of anti-popes, heresy, and the seeds of the Reformation in 
England and in Germany. Thus the secession to Avignon 
in the opening of the fourteenth century was the beginning 
of the end of spiritual unity for Latin Christendom. 

At the very opening of the thirteenth century, the 
diversion of the Crusade to the capture of Constantinople 
in 1204, and all the incidents of that unholy war, prove 
that, as a moral and spiritual movement, the era of Godfrey 
and Tancred, of Peter the Hermit and Bernard of Clair- 
vaux was ended ; and though, for a century or two, kings 
took the Cross, like St. Louis and our Edward i., in the 
thirteenth century, or, like our Henry v., in the fifteenth 
century, talked of so doing, the hope of annihilating Islam 
was gone for ever, and Christendom, for four centuries, 
had enough to do to protect Europe itself from the Moslem. 
And within a few years of this cynical prostitution of the 
Crusading enthusiasm in the conquest of Byzantium, the 
1 Crusading passion broke out in the dreadful persecution 
of the Albigenses and the Crusade against heresy of Simon 
de Montfort. And hardly was the unity of Christendom 
assured by blood and terror, when the spiritual Crusades 
of Francis and Dominic begin, and the contagious zeal of 
the Mendicant Friars restored the force of the Church, and 
gave it a new era of moral and social vitality. 

Now, whilst the Popes were making their last grand 



142 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

rally to weld Christendom into spiritual unity, in France, 
in England, in Spain, in North Italy, in South Italy, in 
Southern Germany, in a minor degree throughout central 
Europe, princes of great energy were organising the germs 
of nations, and were founding the institutions of complex 
civil administration. Monarchy, municipalities, nations, 
and organised government, national constitutions, codes 
of law, a central police, and international trade were grow- 
ing uniformly throughout the entire century. Feudalism, 
strictly so called, the baron's autocracy, baronial war, and 
the manor court, were as rapidly dying down. Crushed 
between the hammer of the kings and the anvil of the 
burghers, the feudal chivalry suffered, in many a bloody 
field, a series of shameful overthrows all through the four- 
teenth century, until it ended in the murderous orgies of 
the fifteenth century. But it was the thirteenth century 
that established throughout Europe the two great forces 
of the future which were to divide the inheritance of feu- 
dalism — a civilised and centralised monarchy on the one 
hand, a rich, industrious, resolute people on the other 
hand. 

It was the thirteenth century, moreover, that saw the 
great development of the manufacturing and trading cities 
north of the Alps. Down to the expulsion of the Chris- 
tians from Palestine, at the close of the twelfth century, 
there had been few cities in Europe of wealth and impor- 
tance outside Italy and the South of France and of Spain. 
But the next hundred years founded the greatness of cities! 
like Paris and London, of Troyes, Rouen, Lyons, Bordeaux, 
Bruges, Ghent, Cologne, Strasburg, Basle, Nuremberg, 
Bremen, Lubeck, Hamburg, Dantzic, Winchester, Nor- 
wich, Exeter, Bristol. The Crusades had brought Europe 
together, and had brought the West face to face with the 
East. Mankind had ceased to be ascriptus glebce, locally 



A SURVEY OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. I43 

bound to a few clearings on the earth. It had begun to 
understand the breadth and variety of the planet, and the 
infinite resources of its products. Industrial exchange on 
a world-wide scale began again after a long interval of ten 
centuries. 

The latter half of this same century also saw the birth 
of that characteristic feature of modern society — the 
control of political power by representative assemblies. 
For the first time in Europe deputies from the towns take 
part in the national councils. In Spain this may be traced 
even before the century begins. Early in the century it 
is found in Sicily ; about the middle of the century we 
trace it in England and Germany ; and finally, in France. 
As every one knows, it was in 1264 that Simon de Mont- 
fort summoned to Parliament knights of each shire, and 
two representatives from boroughs and cities ; and, in 
1295, Edward 1. called together the first fully-constituted 
Parliament as now understood in England. The States- 
General of France, the last and the least memorable of 
all national Parliaments, were only seven years subsequent 
to the formal inauguration of the Parliament of England. 
The introduction of Parliamentary representation would 
alone suffice to make memorable the thirteenth century. 

The same age, too, which was so fertile in new political 
ideas and in grand spiritual effort, was no less rich in 
philosophy, in the germs of science, in reviving the in- 
heritance of ancient learning, in the scientific study of law, 
in the foundation of the great Northern universities, in the 
magnificent expansion of the architecture we call Gothic, 
in the beginnings of painting and of sculpture, in the 
foundation of modern literature, both in prose and verse, 
in the fullest development of the Troubadours, the Ro- 
mance poets, the lays, sonnets, satires, and tales of Italy, 
Provence, and Flanders; and finally, in that stupendous 



144 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

poem, which we universally accept as the greatest of 
modern epical works, wherein the most splendid genius 
of the Middle Ages seemed to chant its last majestic 
requiem, which he himself, as I have said, emphatically 
dated in the year 1300. Truly, if we must use arbitrary 
numbers to help our memory, that year — 1300 — may be 
taken as the resplendent sunset of an epoch which had 
extended in one form back for nearly one thousand years 
to the fall of the Roman empire, and equally as the broken 
and stormy dawn of an epoch which has for six hundred 
years since been passing through an amazing phantasma- 
goria of change. 

Now this great century, the last of the true Middle 
Ages, which, as it drew to its own end, gave birth to 
Modern Society, has a special character of its own, a char- 
acter that gives to it an abiding and enchanting interest. 
We find in it a harmony of power, a universality of endow- 
ment, a glow, an aspiring ambition and confidence, such 
as we never again find in later centuries, at least so gener- 
ally and so permanently diffused. At the opening of the 
thirteenth century, Christendom, as a whole, rested united 
in profound belief in one religious faith. There had ap- 
peared in the age preceding teachers of new doctrines, 
like Abailard, Gilbert de la Poree, Arnold of Brescia, and 
others ; but their new ideas had not at all penetrated to 
the body of the people. As a whole, Christendom had 
still, as the century began, an unquestioned and unques- 
tionable creed, without schism, heresy, doubts, or sects. 
And this creed still sufficed to inspire the most profound 
thought, the most lofty poetry, the widest culture, the 
freest art of the age : it filled statesmen with awe, scholars 
with enthusiasm, and consolidated society around uniform 
objects of reverence and worship. It bound men together, 
from the Hebrides to the Eastern Mediterranean, from the 



A SURVEY OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. I45 

Atlantic to the Baltic, as European men have never since 
been bound. Great thinkers, like Albert of Cologne and 
Aquinas, found it to be the stimulus of their meditations. 
Mighty poets, like Dante, could not conceive poetry, un- 
less based on it and saturated with it. Creative artists, 
like Giotto, found it an ever-living well-spring of pure 
beauty. The great cathedrals embodied it in a thousand 
forms of glory and power. To statesman, artist, poet, 
thinker, teacher, soldier, worker, chief, or follower, it sup- 
plied at once inspiration and instrument. 

This unity of creed had existed, it is true, for five or six 
centuries in large parts of Europe, and, indeed, in a shape 
even more uniform and intense. But not till the thir- 
teenth century did it co-exist with such acute intellectual 
energy, with such philosophic power, with such a free and 
superb art, with such sublime poetry, with so much indus- 
try, culture, wealth, and so rich a development of civic 
organisation. This thirteenth century was the last in the 
history of mankind in Europe when a high and complex/ 
civilisation has been saturated with a uniform and unques-; ; 
tioned creed. As we all know, since then, civilisation has 
had to advance with ever-increasing multiplicity of creeds. 
What impresses us as the keynote of that century is the 
harmony of power it displays. As in the Augustan age, 
or the Periclean age, or the Homeric age, indeed, far more 
than in any of them, men might fairly dream, in the age of 
Innocent and St. Louis, that they had reached a normal 
state, when human life might hope to see an ultimate 
symmetry of existence. There have been since epochs 
of singular intellectual expansion, of creative art, of mate- 
rial progress, of moral earnestness, of practical energy. 
Our nineteenth century has very much of all of these in 
varying proportions. But we have long ceased to expect / 
that they will not clash with each other ; we have aban- 
K 



I46 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

doned hope of ever seeing them work in organic harmony 
together. 

Now the thirteenth century was an era of no one special 
character. It was in nothing one-sided, and in nothing 
discordant. It had great thinkers, great rulers, great 
teachers, great poets, great artists, great moralists, and 
great workers. It could not be called the material age, 
the devotional age, the political age, or the poetic age, in 
any special degree. It was equally poetic, political, indus- 
trial, artistic, practical, intellectual, and devotional. And 
these qualities acted in harmony on a uniform conception 
of life, with a real symmetry of purpose. There was one 
common creed, one ritual, one worship, one sacred lan- 
guage, one Church, a single code of manners, a uniform 
scheme of society, a common system of education, an 
accepted type of beauty, a universal art, something like a 
recognised standard of the Good, the Beautiful, and the 
True. One half of the world was not occupied in ridicul- 
ing or combating what the other half was doing. Nor 
were men absorbed in ideals of their own, whilst treating 
the ideals of their neighbours as matters of indifference 
and waste of power. Men as utterly different from each 
other as were Stephen Langton, St. Francis, Thomas Aqui- 
nas, Roger Bacon, Dante, Giotto, St. Louis, Edward 1. — 
all profoundly accepted one common order of ideas, equally 
applying to things of the intellect, of moral duty, of action, 
and of the soul — to public and private life at once — and 
they could all feel that they were together working out 
the same task. It may be doubted if that has ever hap- 
pened in Europe since. 

To point out the peculiar character of an age is not to 
praise it without reserve : much less to ask men to return 
to it now. No one can now be suspected of sighing for 
the time of Innocent hi., of St. Francis and St. Louis ; 



A SURVEY OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. I47 

nor do reasonable historians deny that their simple beliefs 
and ideas are frankly incompatible with all that to-day we 
call freedom, science, and progress. Let us be neither 
reactionary, nor obscurantist, neither Catholic nor abso- 
lutist in sympathy, but seek only to understand an age in 
its own spirit, and from the field of its own ideas. Nor 
need we forget how the uniform creed of Christendom 
was shaken, even in the thirteenth century, by fierce 
spasms which ended too often in blood and horror. Their 
social system certainly was not without struggles ; for the 
thirteenth century was no golden era, nor did the lion lie 
down with the lamb or consent to be led by a little child. 
We cannot forget either Albigensian War or Runnymede, 
nor our Barons' War, nor Guelphs and Ghibellines, nor the 
history of Frederick n., Manfred, and Conradino, nor the 
fall of Boniface, nor the Sicilian Vespers. And yet we 
may confidently maintain that there was a real coherence 
of belief, sentiment, manners, and life in the thirteenth 
century. 

Perhaps we ought rather to say, in its earlier genera- 
tions and for the great mass of its people and doings. 
For we may see the seed of divergencies, heresies, insur- 
rections, civil war, anarchy, discord, doubt, and rebellion 
in Church, State, society, and habits, gathering up in the 
thirteenth century, and especially definite in its stormy 
and ominous close. In Roger Bacon, even in Aquinas, 
nay, in Dante, there lie all the germs of the intellectual 
dilemmas which shook Catholicism to its foundations. 
Francis and Dominic, if they gave the Church a magnifi- 
cent rally, saved her by remedies which a cool judgment 
must pronounce to be suicidal. Our Edward I., in the 
thirteenth century, had to deal with the same rebellious 
forces which made the reign of our Henry vi., in the fif- 
teenth century, a record of blood and anarchy. Boniface, 






I48 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

Philip the Fair, even Edward 1., did violent things in the 
thirteenth century, which Churchmen and princes after 
them hardly exceeded. And there are profanities and 
ribaldries in the thirteenth-century poetry which Rabelais, 
Voltaire, and Diderot have not surpassed. But in judg- 
ing an epoch one has to weigh how far those things were 
common and characteristic of it, how far they deeply and 
widely affected it. Judged by these tests, we must say 
that scepticism, anarchy, ribaldry, and hypocrisy, however 
latent in the thirteenth century, had not yet eaten out its 
soul. 

It may surprise some readers to treat the thirteenth 
century as the virtual close of the Middle Ages, an epoch 
which is usually placed in the latter half of the fifteenth 
century, in the age of Louis xi., Henry vn., and Ferdi- 
nand of Arragon. But the true spirit of Feudalism, the 
living soul of Catholicism, which together make up the 
compound type of society we call mediaeval, were, in point 
of fact, waning all through the thirteenth century. The 
hurly-burly of the fourteenth and the first half of the fif- 
teenth centuries was merely one long and cruel death 
agony. Nay, the inner soul of Catholic Feudalism quite 
ended in the first generation of the thirteenth century — 
with St. Dominic, St. Francis, Innocent 111., Philip Au- 
gustus, and Otto iv., Stephen Langton, and William, Earl 
Mareschal. The truly characteristic period of mediaeval- 
ism is in the twelfth, rather than the thirteenth, century, 
the period covered by the first three Crusades from 1094, 
the date of the Council of Clermont, to 1192, when Cceur- 
de-Lion withdrew from the Holy Land. Or, if we put it 
a little wider in limits, we may date true mediaevalism from 
the rise of Hildebrand, about 1070, to the death of Inno- 
cent in. in 12 16, or just about a century and a half. St. 
Louis himself, as we read Joinville's Memoirs, seems to us 



1/ 

A SURVEY OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 149 

a man belated, born too late, and almost an anachronism 
in the second half of the thirteenth century. 

We know that in the slow evolution of society the social 
brilliancy of a movement is seldom visible, and is almost 
never ripe for poetic and artistic idealisation until the 
energy of the movement itself is waning, or even it may 
be, is demonstrably spent. Shakespeare prolonged the 
Renascence of the fifteenth century, the Renascence of 
Leonardo and Raphael, into the seventeenth century, 
when Puritanism was in full career ; and Shakespeare — 
it is deeply significant — died on the day when Oliver 
Cromwell entered college at Cambridge. And so, when 
Dante, in his Vision of 1300, saw the heights and the 
depths of Catholic Feudalism, he was looking back over 
great movements which were mighty forces a hundred 
years earlier. Just so, though the thirteenth century 
contained within its bosom the plainest proofs that the 
mediaeval world was ending, the flower, the brilliancy, the 
variety, the poetry, the soul of the mediaeval world, were 
never seen in so rich a glow as in the thirteenth century, 
its last great effort. 

In a brief review of each of the dominant movements 
which give so profound a character to the thirteenth cen- 
tury as a whole, one begins naturally with the central 
movement of all — the Church. The thirteenth century 
was the era of the culmination, the over-straining, and then 
the shameful defeat of the claim made by the Church of 
Rome to a moral and spiritual autocracy in Christendom. 
There are at least five Popes in that one hundred years 
— Innocent 111., Gregory ix., Innocent iv., Gregory x., 
and Boniface vm. — whose characters impress us with a 
sense of power or of astounding desire of power, whose 
lives are romances and dreams, and whose careers are 
amongst the most instructive in history. He who would 



I50 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 






understand the Middle Ages must study from beginning to 
end the long and crowded Pontificate of Innocent in. In 
genius, in commanding nature, in intensity of character, in 
universal energy, in aspiring designs, Innocent in. has few 
rivals in the fourteenth centuries of the Roman Pontiffs, 
and few superiors in any age on any throne in the world. 
His eighteen years of rule, from 1198 to 12 16, were one 
long effort, for the moment successful, and in part deserv- 
ing success, to enforce on the kings and peoples of Europe 
a higher morality, respect for the spiritual mission of the 
Church, and a sense of their common civilisation. We 
feel that he is truly a great man with a noble cause, when 
the Pope forces Philip Augustus to take back the wife he 
had so insolently cast off, when the Pope forces John to 
respect the rights of all his subjects, laymen or churchmen, 
when the Pope gives to England the best of her Primates, 
Stephen Langton, the principal author of our Great Char- 
ter, when the Pope accepts the potent enthusiasm of the 
New Friars and sends them forth on their mission of 
revivalism. 

It is not necessary to enter on one of the most difficult 
problems in history to decide how far the development and 
organisation of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages 
were worth the price that civilisation paid in moral, intel- 
lectual, and in material loss. Still less can we attempt to 
justify such Crusades as that which established the Latin 
kingdom in Constantinople, or the Crusade to crush the 
revolt of the Albigensian heretics, and all the enormous 
assumptions of Innocent in things temporal and things 
spiritual. But before we decide that in the thirteenth cen- 
tury civilisation would have been the gainer, if there had 
been no central Church at all, let us count up all the great 
brains of the time, with Aquinas and Dante at their head, 
all the great statesmen, St. Louis, Blanche of Castile, in 



A SURVEY OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 1 5 1 

France ; Simon de Montfort and Edward i., in England, 
and Ferdinand in., in Spain ; Frederick n. and Rudolph of 
Hapsburg, in the Empire, — who might in affairs of state 
often oppose Churchmen, but who felt that society itself 
reposed on a well-ordered Church. 

If the great attempt failed in the hands of Innocent in., 
surely one of the finest brains and noblest natures that 
Rome ever sent forth — and fail it did on the whole, ex- 
cept as a temporary expedient — it could not succeed with 
smaller men, when every generation made the conditions 
of success more hopeless. The superhuman pride of Greg- 
ory ix., the venerable pontiff who for fourteen years de-i 
fied the whole strength of the Emperor Frederick n., 
seems to us to-day, in spite of his lofty spirit, but to parody 
that of Hildebrand, of Alexander in., and Innocent in. 
And when we come to Innocent iv. (i 243-1 264), the dis- 
turber of the peace of the Empire, he is almost a forecast 
of Boniface vin. And Boniface himself (1 294-1 303), 
though his words were more haughty than those of the 
mightiest of his predecessors, though insatiable ambition 
and audacious intrigue gave him some moments of triumph, 
ended after nine years of desperate struggle in what the 
poet calls 'the mockery, the vinegar, the gall of a new cru- 
cifixion of the Vicar of Christ.' Read Dante, and see all 
that a great spirit in the Middle Ages could still hope from 
the Church and its chiefs — all that made such dreams a 
mockery and a delusion. 

When Dante wrote, the Popes were already settled at 
Avignon and the Church had entered upon one of its worst 
eras. And as we follow his scathing indignation, in the 
nineteenth canto of the Inferno, or in the twenty-seventh 
of the Paradiso, we feel how utterly the vision of Peter 
had failed to be realised on earth. But for one hundred 
years before, all through the thirteenth century, the writing 



152 



THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 



on the wall may now be read, in letters of fire. When 
Saladin forced the allied kings of Europe to abandon the 
conquest of the Holy Sepulchre, and Lion-hearted Richard 
turned back in despair (1192), the Crusades, as military 
movements, ended. The later Crusades of the thirteenth 
century were splendid acts of folly, of anachronism, even 
crime. They were ' magnificent, but not war ' — in any 
rational sense. It was Europe that had to be protected 
against the Moslem — not Asia or Africa that was to be 
conquered. All through the thirteenth century European 
civilisation was enjoying the vast material and intellectual 
results of the Crusades of the twelfth century. But to sail 
for Jerusalem, Egypt, or Tunis, had then become, as the wise 
Joinville told St. Louis, a cruel neglect of duty at home. 

It was not merely in the exhaustion of the Crusading 
zeal that the waning of the Catholic fervour was shown. 
In the twelfth century there had been learned or ingenious 
heretics. But the mark of the thirteenth century is the 
rise of heretic sects, schismatic churches, religious refor- 
mations, spreading deep down amongst the roots of the 
people. We have the three distinct religious movements 
which began to sap the orthodox citadel, and which after- 
wards took such vast proportions — Puritanism, Mysticism, 
Scepticism. All of them take form in the thirteenth cen- 
tury — Waldenses, Albigenses, Petrobussians, Poor Men, 
Anti-Ritualists, Anti-Sacerdotalists, Manichaeans, Gospel 
Christians, Quietists, Flagellants, Pastoureaux, fanatics of 
all orders. All through the thirteenth century we have an 
intense ferment of the religious exaltation, culminating in 
the orthodox mysticism, the rivalries, the missions, the 
revivalism, of the new allies of the Church, the Franciscans 
and Dominicans, the Friars or Mendicant Orders. 

The thirteenth century saw the romantic rise, the mar- 
vellous growth, and then the inevitable decay of the Friars, 



A SURVEY OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 1 53 

the two orders whose careers form one of the most fas- 
cinating and impressive stories in modern history. The 
Franciscans, or Grey Friars, founded in 12 12, the Domini- 
cans, or Black Friars, founded in 12 16, by the middle of 
the century had infused new life throughout the Catholic 
world. By the end of the century their power was spent, 
and they had begun to be absorbed in the general life of 
the Church. It was one of the great rallies of the Papal 
Church, perhaps of all the rallies the most important, cer- 
tainly the most brilliant, most pathetic, most fascinating, 
the most rich in poetry, in art, in devotion. For the me-/ 
diaeval Church of Rome, like the Empire of the Caesars at 
Rome, like the Eastern Empire of Constantinople, like the 
Empire of the Khalifs, which succeeded that, seems to 
subsist for centuries after its epoch of zenith by a long 
series of rallies, revivals, and new births out of almost 
hopeless disorganisation and decay. 

But the thirteenth century is not less memorable for 
its political than for its spiritual history. And in this 
field the history is that of new organisations, not the dis- 
solution of the old. The thirteenth century gave Europe 
the nations as we now know them. France, England, 
Spain, large parts of North and South Germany, became 
nations, where they were previously counties, duchies, and 
fiefs. Compare the map of Europe at the end of the 
twelfth century, when Philip Augustus was struggling 
with Richard 1., when the King of England was a more 
powerful ruler in France than the so-called King of 
France in Paris, when Spain was held by various groups 
of petty kinglets facing the solid power of the Moors, 
compare this with the map of Europe at the end of the 
thirteenth century, with Spain constituted a kingdom under 
Ferdinand in. and Alfonso x., France under Philip the 
Fair, and England under Edward 1. 



154 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

At the very opening of the thirteenth century John did 
England the inestimable service of losing her French 
possessions. At the close of the century the greatest of 
the Plantagenets finally annexed Wales to England and 
began the incorporation of Scotland and Ireland. Of the 
creators of England as a sovereign power in the world, 
from Alfred to Chatham, between the names of the Con- 
queror and Cromwell, assuredly that of Edward I. is the 
most important. As to France, the petty counties which 
Philip Augustus inherited in 1180 had become, in the 
days of Philip the Fair (1286-1 3 14), the most powerful 
nation in Europe. As a great European force, the French 
nation dates from the age of Philip Augustus, Blanche of 
Castile, her son Louis ix. (the Saint), and the two Philips 
(in. and iv.), the son and grandson of St. Louis. The 
monarchy of France was indeed created in the thirteenth 
century. All that went before was preparation : all that 
came afterwards was development. Almost as much may 
be said for England and for Spain. 

It was an age of great rulers. Indeed, we may doubt 
if any hundred years of European history has been so 
crowded with great statesmen and kings. In England, 
Stephen Langton and the authors of our Great Charter 
in 121 5; William, Earl Mareschal, Simon de Montfort, Earl 
of Leicester, and above all Edward 1., great as soldier, as 
ruler, as legislator — as great when he yielded as when he 
compelled. In France, Philip Augustus, a king curiously 
like our Edward 1. in his virtues as in his faults, though 
earlier by three generations ; Blanche, his son's wife, Re- 
gent of France ; St. Louis, her son ; and St. Louis' grand- 
son, the terrible, fierce, subtle, and adroit Philip the Fair. 
Then on the throne of the Empire, from 1220 to 1250, 
Frederick 11., ' the world's wonder,' one of the most bril- 
liant characters of the Middle Ages, whose life is a long 



A SURVEY OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 1 55 

romance, whose many-sided endowments seemed to promise 
everything but real greatness and abiding results. Next, 
after a generation, his successor, less brilliant but far more 
truly great, Rudolph of Hapsburg, emperor from 1273 to 
1291, the founder of the Austrian dynasty, the ancestor 
of its sovereigns, the parallel, I had almost said the equal, 
of our own Edward 1. In Spain, Ferdinand in. and his 
son, Alfonso x., whose reigns united gave Spain peace and 
prosperity for fifty-four years (1230-1284). 

How comes it that in this epoch lands so different as 
Italy, Spain, France, England, and Germany, produce 
rulers who, in all essentials as statesmen, are so closely 
parallel in act, whilst widely different in character ? Fred- 
erick 11., in nature, seems the antithesis of St. Louis, so 
does Philip Augustus of Ferdinand in., our cultured 
Edward 1. of his martial contemporary, Rudolph of Haps- 
burg. Yet these men, differing so entirely in nature and 
in gifts, ruling men so different as those of Sicily and i 
Austria, Castile and England, all exercise the same func- ( 
tions in the same way : all are great generals, adminis- 
trators, legislators, statesmen, founders of nations, authors 
of constitutions, supporters of the Church, promoters of 
learning. Clearly it is that their time is the golden age 
of kings, an age when the social conditions forced forth 
all the manhood and the genius of the born ruler ; when 
the ruled were by habit, religion, and by necessity eager 
to welcome the great king and cheerfully helped him in 
his task. Of them all, St. Louis is certainly the most 
beautiful nature, Frederick 11. the most interesting person- 
ality, our Simon de Montfort the most genuine patriot, 
our own Edward 1. the most creative mind, and he and 
Philip Augustus the kings whose work was the most preg- 
nant with permanent results ; but we may find in a much 
ruder nature, in Rudolph of Hapsburg, the simple, un- 



156 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

wearied warrior chief, who finally turned the German 
kings from Italy to the North, who never quarrelled with . 
the Church, who so sternly asserted the arm of law, and 
whose whole life was an unbroken series of well-won 
triumphs — the most truly typical king of the thirteenth 
century. Frederick 11. and Edward 1. are really in advance 
of their age ; and St. Louis and Ferdinand in. are saints 
and churchmen more than kings. 

Together with the kings must be kept always in view 
the base on which the power of the kings was founded — 
the growing greatness of the towns. There were two 
allied forces which divided the inheritance of Feudalism 
— the monarchs on the one hand, the burghers on the 
other. The thirteenth century is eminently the era of 
the foundation of the great towns north of the Alps. In 
France, in Spain, in England, in Burgundy, in Flanders, 
and even we may say in Germany, the princes never 
became strong but by alliance with the wealth, the intelli- 
gence, the energy, of the cities. To the burghers the 
kings represented civilisation, internal peace, good gov- 
ernment : to the kings the towns represented the sinews 
of war, the material and intellectual sources of their splen- 
dour, of their armies, their civil organisation. Hence, in 
the thirteenth century, there grew in greatness, side by 
side and in friendly alliance, the two powers which, in later 
centuries, have fought out such obstinate battles — the 
monarchies and the people. And out of this alliance, at 
once its condition and its instrument, there grew up 
Cortes, Diets, States-General, Parliaments, Charters, con- 
stitutional laws, codes, and ordinances. 

It is true that in Italy, Spain, Provence, and Languedoc, 
we find rich trading towns as early as the First Crusade, 
but it was not until the thirteenth century that we can 
call any northern city an independent power, with a large, 



A SURVEY OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 1 57 

wealthy, and proud population, a municipal life of its own, 
and a widely extended commerce. By the end of the 
thirteenth century Europe is covered with such towns — 
Paris, London, Strasburg, Cologne, Ghent, Rouen, Bor- 
deaux, in the first line, the great wool cities of East Eng- 
land, the ports of the South and West, the great river 
cities of France along the Loire, the Rhone, the Garonne, 
the Seine, the rich, artistic, laborious, and crowded cities 
of Flanders, the rich and powerful cities on the Rhine 
from Basle down to Arnheim, the cities of the Danube, 
the Elbe, and the Baltic. This is the age of the great 
confederation of the Rhine, and the rise of the Hanseatic 
League ; for in Germany and in Flanders, where the towns 
could not count on the protection of a friendly and central 
monarchy, the towns formed mutual leagues for protec- 
tion and support amongst themselves. It would need a 
volume to work out this complex development. But we 
may take it that, for Northern Europe, the thirteenth cen- 
tury is the era of the definite establishment of rich, free, 
self-governing municipalities. It is the flourishing era of 
town charters, of city leagues, and of the systematic estab- 
lishment of a European commerce, north of the Mediter- 
ranean, both inter-provincial and inter-national. And out 
of these rich and teeming cities arose that social power 
destined to such a striking career in the next six centuries 
— the middle class, a new order in the State, whose 
importance rests on wealth, intelligence, and organisation, 
not on birth or on arms. And out of that middle class 
rose popular representation, election by the commons, i.e., 
by communes, or corporate constituencies, the third es- 
tate. The history of popular representation in Europe 
would occupy a volume, or many volumes : its conception, 
birth, and youth fall within the thirteenth century. 

The Great Charter, which the barons, as real represen- 



I58 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

tatives of the whole nation, wrested from John in 12 15, 
did not, it is true, contain any scheme of popular represen- 
tation ; but it asserted the principle, and it laid down 
canons of public law which led directly to popular repre- 
sentation and a parliamentary constitution. The Great 
Charter has been talked about for many centuries in vague 
superlatives of praise, by those who had little precise or 
accurate knowledge of it. But now that our knowledge of 
it is full and exact, we see that its importance was in no 
way exaggerated, and perhaps was hardly understood ; 
and we find it hard adequately to express our admiration 
of its wise, just, and momentous policy. The Great 
Charter of 12 15 led in a direct line to the complete and 
developed Parliament of 1295. And Bishop Stubbs has 
well named the interval between the two, the eighty years 
of struggle for a political constitution. The Charter of John 
contains the principle of taxation through the common 
council of the realm. From the very first year after it 
representative councils appear ; first from counties ; then, 
in 1254, we have a regular Parliament from shires; in 
1264, after the battle of Lewes, Simon de Montfort, Earl 
of Leicester, summoned two discreet representatives from 
towns and cities by writ ; in 1273, Edward 1. summoned 
what was in effect a Parliament ; and, after several Parlia- 
ments summoned in intervening years, we have the first 
complete and finally constituted Parliament in 1295. 

But our own, the greatest and most permanent of Par- 
liaments, was by no means the earliest. Representatives 
of cities and boroughs had come to the Cortes of Castile 
and of Arragon in the twelfth century ; early in the thir- 
teenth century Frederick 11. summoned them to general 
courts in Sicily ; in the middle of the century the towns 
sent deputies to the German Diets ; in 1277, the commons 
and towns swear fealty to Rudolph of Hapsburg; in 1291, 



A SURVEY OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 1 59 

was founded in the mountains of Schwytz that Swiss con- 
federation which has just celebrated its 6ooth anniversary ; 
and, in 1302, Philip the Fair summoned the States-General 
to back him in his desperate duel with Boniface viii. 
Thus, seven years after Edward 1". had called to West- 
minster that first true Parliament which has had there so 
great a history over 600 years, Philip called together to 
Notre Dame at Paris the three estates — the clergy, the 
baronage, and the commons. So clear is it that the thir- 
teenth century called into being that momentous element 
of modern civilisation, the representation of the people 
in Parliament. 

Side by side with Parliaments there grew up the power 
of the law courts : along with constitutions, civil jurispru- 
dence. Our Edward 1. is often called, and called truly, the 
English Justinian. The authority of the decisions of the 
courts, the development of law by direct legislation — i.e., 
case-law as we know it, legislative amendment of the law as 
we know it — first begin with the reign of Edward 1. From 
that date to this hour we have an unbroken sequence of de- 
velopment in our judicial, as much as in our parliamentary, 
history. An even more momentous transformation of law 
took place throughout France. There the kings created 
the powerful order of the jurists, and ruled at home and 
abroad through them. In the legislation of Philip Augus- 
tus, the translation under him of the Corpus Juris into 
French, the famous Etablissements of St. Louis, at the 
middle of the century, the growing importance of the Parle- 
ments, or judicial councils, under Philip the Fair at the end 
of the century, we have the first resurrection of the Roman 
civil law to fight out its long contest with the feudal law, 
which has led to its ultimate supremacy in the Civil Code of 
our day. 

These, however, are but the external facts forming the 



l60 THE MEANING OF HISTORY 



framework within which the moral and intellectual ferment 
of the thirteenth century moved and worked ; and in group- 
ing in a few paragraphs the well-known outlines of the po- 
litical events of that age we are merely tracing the skeleton 
of the living forces of the time. In many ways the thir- 
teenth century created by anticipation much of the Renas- 
cence that we associate with the fifteenth and sixteenth 
centuries. It was a revival or new era, deeper, purer, more 
constructive than the latter movement, which we commonly 
speak of as Renaissance. This superfluous Gallicism is a 
term which we should do well to drop ; for it suggests a na- 
tional character to a European movement ; it implies a new 
birth, in the spirit of mendacious vanity, so characteristic of 
the age of Cellinis and Aretinos ; and it expresses the nega- 
tive side of what was largely a mere evolution of the past. 
As a creative movement, the profound uprising of intellect 
and soul concentrated in Dante was a far nobler and more 
potent effort than any form of classical revival. The move- 
ment we associate with the epoch of Leo x., of Francis i., 
and Charles v. was only one of the series of European 
efforts to realise a more complete type of moral and social 
life ; and of them all it was the one most deeply tainted 
with the spirit of vanity, of impurity, and of anarchy. Of 
all the epochs of effort after a new life, that of the age of 
Aquinas, Roger Bacon, St. Francis, St. Louis, Giotto, and 
Dante is the most purely spiritual, the most really construc- 
tive, and indeed the most truly philosophic. 

Between the epoch of Charlemagne and the revolution- 
ary reconstruction of the present century we may count at 
least four marked periods of concerted effort in Western 
Europe to found a broader and higher type of society. 
European civilisation advances, no doubt, in a way which is 
most irregular, and yet in the long run continuous. But 
we may still trace very distinct periods of special activity 






A SURVEY OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. l6l 

and common upheaval. One of these periods is the age of 
Hildebrand, the great Norman chiefs, Lanfranc, Anselm, 
and the first Crusade. The second period is that which 
opens with Innocent in. and closes with Dante. The third 
is the classical revival from Louis xi. to Charles v. The 
fourth is the philosophic and scientific movement of the age 
of Voltaire, Diderot, and Hume, which preceded the great 
revolutionary wars. The first two movements, in the golden 
age of Popes and Crusades, were sincere attempts to reform 
society on a Catholic and Feudal basis. They did not suc- 
ceed, but they were both inspired with great and beautiful 
ideals. And the movement of the thirteenth century was 
more humane, more intellectual, more artistic, more origi- 
nal, and more poetic than that of the eleventh century. The 
so-called Renaissance, or Humanistic Revival, was a time of 
extraordinary brilliancy and energy ; but it was avowedly 
based on insurrection and destruction, and it was an utterly 
premature attempt to found an intellectual humanism with- 
out either real humanity or sound scientific knowledge. 
And the age of Voltaire, though it had both humanity 
and science, was even more destructive in its aim ; for it 
erected negation into its own creed, and proposed to regen- 
erate mankind by ' stamping out the infamy ' (of religion). 
It follows then that, if we are to select any special period 
for the birth of a regenerate and developed modern society, 
we may take the age of Dante, 1 265-1 321, as that which 
witnessed the mighty transformation from a world which 
still trusted in the faith of a Catholic and Feudal consti- 
tution of society to a world which was teeming with ideas 
and wants incompatible with Catholic or Feudal systems 
altogether. The whole thirteenth century was crowded 
with creative forces in philosophy, art, poetry, and states- 
manship as rich as those of the Humanist Renaissance. 
And if we are accustomed to look on them as so much 
L 



1 62 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

more limited and rude, it is because we forget how very 
few and poor were their resources and their instruments. 
In creative genius, Giotto is the peer, if not the superior, 
of Raphael. Dante had all the qualities of his three chief 
successors — and very much more besides. It is a tenable 
view that, in pure inventive fertility and in imaginative 
range, those vast composite creations — the cathedrals of 
the thirteenth century — in all their wealth of architecture, 
statuary, painted glass, enamels, embroideries, and inex- 
haustible decorative work, may be set beside the entire 
painting of the sixteenth century. Albert and Aquinas, in/ 
philosophic range, had no peer until we come down to Desf 
cartes. Nor was Roger Bacon surpassed in versatile au- 
dacity of genius and in true encyclopaedic grasp, by any 
thinker between him and his namesake, the Chancellor. 
In statesmanship, and all the qualities of the born leader of 
men, we can only match the great chiefs of the thirteenth 
century by comparing them with the greatest names three 
or even four centuries later. 

The thirteenth century was indeed an abortive revival. 
It was a failure : but a splendid failure. Men as great as 
any the world has known in thought, in art, in action, pro- 
foundly believed that society could be permanently organ- 
ised on Catholic and Feudal lines. It was an illusion ; but 
it was neither an unworthy nor an inexcusable illusion ; for 
there were great resources, both in Catholic and in Feudal 
powers. And it was not possible for the greatest minds, 
after the thousand years of interval which had covered 
Europe since the age of the Antonines, to understand how 
vast were the defects of their own age in knowledge, in 
the arts of life, and in social organisation. They had no 
ancient world, or what we call to-day, the Revival of Learn- 
ing ; they had no real science ; and even the ordinary 
commonplaces of every Greek and Roman were to them a 



y 

A SURVEY OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 1 63 

profound mystery. What was even worse, they did not 
know how much they needed to know : they had no meas- 
ure of their own ignorance. And thus even intellects like 
those of Albert, Aquinas, and Dante could still dream of a 
final co-ordination of human knowledge on the lines of some 
subjective recasting of the Catholic verities. And they 
naturally imagined that, after all, society could be saved 
by some regeneration of the Church — though we now see 
that this was far less possible than to expect Pope Boniface 
eventually to turn out a saint, like Bernard of Clairvaux or 
Francis of Assisi. 

And just as the men of intellect still believed that it 
was possible to recast the Catholic scheme, so men of 
action still believed it possible to govern nations on the 
Feudal scheme, and with the help of the feudal magnates. 
For a time all through the thirteenth century, men of very 
noble character or of commanding genius did manage to 
govern in this way, by the help first of the churchmen, 
then of the growing townships, and by constantly ex- 
hausting their own barons in foreign expeditions. Philip 
Augustus, Blanche, St. Louis, and Philip the Fair held 
their own by a combination of high qualities and fortunate 
conditions. In England the infamous John and his foolish 
son forced the feudal chiefs to become statesmen them- 
selves. Edward i., Rudolph of Hapsburg, Albert of Aus- 
tria, Henry of Luxembourg, succeeded in marshalling their 
fierce baronial squadrons. But it could only be done by 
extraordinary skill and fortune, and even then but for a 
short time. After them, for nearly two hundred years, 
Europe was delivered over to an orgie of feudal anarchy. 
The dreadful Hundred Years' War between France and 
England, the wars of succession, the Wars of the Roses, 
the dismemberment of France, the confusion of Spain, the 
decadence of the Empire ensued. 



164 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

Thus the political history of the fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries is a record of bloodshed and anarchy, until men 
like the grim Louis xi., Ferdinand v. and Charles v., and 
the Tudors in England finally succeeded in mastering 
Feudalism by the aid of the middle classes and middle- 
class statesmen. But, as neither middle class nor middle- 
class statesmen existed in the thirteenth century, the kings 
were forced to do the best they could with their feudal 
resources. What they did was often very good, and some- 
times truly wonderful. It could not permanently suc- 
ceed ; but its very failure was a grand experiment. And 
thus, whether in the spiritual and intellectual world, or in 
the political and social world, the thirteenth century — the 
last great effort of the Middle Ages — was doomed to in- 
evitable disappointment, because the preceding thousand 
years of history had deprived it of the only means by 
which success was possible. 

The unmistakable sign that the real force of Catholi- 
cism was exhausted may be read in the transfer of the 
intellectual leadership from the monasteries to the schools, 
from the churchmen to the doctors. And this transfer 
was thoroughly effected in the thirteenth century. In the 
eleventh and twelfth centuries the spiritual and philo- 
sophic guidance of mankind was in the hands of true 
monks. Clugny, Clairvaux, St. Denis, Bee, Canterbury, 
Merton, Malmesbury, Glastonbury, and Croyland sent 
out teachers and rulers. St. Bernard managed to silence 
Abailard. But in the thirteenth century it is not the 
monasteries but the universities that hold up the torch. 
Paris, Oxford, Montpellier, and the like were wholly secu- 
lar schools ; for though the leading doctors and profes- 
sors of this age are still nominally churchmen, and even 
monks, their whole moral and mental attitude, and the 
atmosphere of their schools, are strictly secular, and not 



A SURVEY OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 165 

monastic. Within two generations the Dominican and 
Franciscan houses, founded at the beginning of the cen- 
tury in such a whirlwind of ecstatic devotion, became 
celebrated schools of learning and secular education, so 
that Aquinas has almost as little of the missionary passion 
of St. Dominic as Roger Bacon has of the mystic tender- 
ness of St. Francis. It is a fact of deep significance that, 
within a generation of the foundation of the Mendicant 
Orders, the Descartes and the Bacon of the thirteenth 
century were both on the roll of the Friars. So rapidly 
did mystic theology tend to develop into free inquiry. It 
would be hard to find anything more utterly unlike the 
saintly ideal of monasticism than were Paris and Oxford 
at the end of the thirteenth century. Its whole intellect- 
ual character may be measured by the light of these two 
famous seminaries of the new thought. 

It was the great age of the schools we call universities, 
for though those of Italy belong to an earlier age, the 
thirteenth century gave full stature to the universities of 
Paris, and of Oxford, of Orleans, Toulouse, and Montpel- 
lier, of Cordova, Seville, and Toledo. That of Paris re- 
ceived from Philip Augustus in 121 5 (the year of our 
Great Charter) her formal constitution, and all through 
the thirteenth century her 'nations' of twenty thousand 
students formed the main intellectual centre of Europe. 
The University of Oxford was hardly second to that of 
Paris ; and though the history of the Oxford schools is in 
its origin obscure, and even local, in the thirteenth cen- 
tury we can trace the definite constitution of the uni- 
versity and the momentous foundation of the colleges, 
when Walter de Merton, in the reign of Edward 1., gave 
statutes to Merton College. Thus the origin of our great 
English university is almost exactly coeval with the origin 
of our English Parliament. 



l66 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

The same age also witnessed the revival of rational phi- 
losophy after its long sleep of a thousand years. Intel- 
lects quite as powerful as those of the Greek thinkers took 
up the task of constructing a harmony of general ideas on 
the ground where it had been left by the Alexandrine suc- 
cessors of Aristotle and Plato. The best teachers of the 
thirteenth century had conceptions and aims very far 
broader and more real than those of Abailard, of William 
of Champeaux, or John of Salisbury in the twelfth cen- 
tury, who were little more than theological logicians. The 
thirteenth century had an instrument of its own, at least 
as important to human progress as the classical revival of 
the fifteenth century. This was the recovery in sub- 
stance of the works of Aristotle. By the middle of the 
thirteenth century the entire works of Aristotle were 
more or less sufficiently known. For the most part they 
were translated from the Arabic, where they had lain hid 
for six centuries, like papyri discovered in an Egyptian 
mummy case. They were made known by Alexander 
Hales at Paris, by Albert the Great and Aquinas, his 
pupil and successor. Albert of Cologne, the ( Universal 
Doctor,' as they called him, might himself, by virtue of 
his encyclopaedic method, be styled the Aristotle of the 
thirteenth century, as St. Bonaventura, the 'Seraphic 
Doctor,' the mystical metaphysician, may be called the 
Plato of the thirteenth century. Roger Bacon, the Oxford 
Franciscan, is even yet but imperfectly known to us, 
though he is often compared, not unfavourably, with his 
famous namesake, the author of the Novum Organum. 
But, in spite of the amazing ingenuity of the founder of 
natural philosophy in modern Europe, we can hardly hesi- 
tate to place above all his contemporaries — the ' Angelic 
Doctor,' Thomas Aquinas, the Descartes of the thirteenth 
century, and beyond doubt the greatest philosophic mind 
between Aristotle and Descartes. 



A SURVEY OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 1 67 

Albert, Roger, Thomas, combined, as did Aristotle and 
Descartes, the science of nature with the philosophy of 
thought ; and, though we look back to the Opus Majus of 
Roger Bacon with wonder and admiration for his marvel- 
lous anticipatory guesses of modern science, we cannot 
doubt that Aquinas was truly the mightier intellect. 
Roger Bacon was, indeed, four centuries in advance of his 
age — on his own age and on succeeding ages he produced 
no influence at all. But Aquinas was ' the master of those 
who know ' for all Christian thinkers from his death, in 
1274, until the age of Francis Bacon and Descartes. 
Roger Bacon, like Leonardo da Vinci, or Giordano Bruno, 
or Spinoza, belongs to the order of intellectual pioneers, 
who are too much in advance of their age and of its actual 
resources to promote civilisation as they might do, or even 
to make the most of their own extraordinary powers. 

An age which united aspiring intellect, passionate devo- 
tion, and constructive power, naturally created a new type 
of sacred art. The pointed architecture, that we call 
Gothic, had its rise, its development, its highest splendour 
in the thirteenth century, to which we owe all that is most 
lovely in the churches of Chartres, Amiens, Reims, Paris, 
Bourges, Strasburg, Cologne, Burgos, Toledo, Westmin- 
ster, Salisbury, and Lincoln. It is true that there are 
some traces of the pointed style in France in the twelfth 
century, at St. Denis, at Sens, and at Laon ; but the true 
glories of this noble art belong, in France, to the reigns of 
Philip Augustus and of St. Louis ; in England, to those of 
Henry in. and Edward i. In these two countries we must 
seek the origin of this wonderful creation of human art, of 
which Chartres, Amiens, and Westminster are the cen- 
tral examples. These glorious fanes of the thirteenth cen- 
tury were far more than works of art : they were at once 
temples, national monuments, museums, schools, musical 



l68 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

academies, and parliament halls, where the whole people 
gathered to be trained in every form of art, in all kinds of 
knowledge, and in all modes of intellectual cultivation. 
They were the outgrowth of the whole civilisation of their 
age, in a manner so complete and intense, that its like was 
never before seen, except on the Acropolis of Athens, in 
the age of ^Eschylus and Pericles. It is not enough to 
recall the names of the master masons — Robert de Lu- 
zarches, Robert de Coucy, Erwin of Steinbach, and Pierre 
de Montereau. These vast temples are the creation of 
generations of men and the embodiment of entire epochs ; 
and he who would know the Middle Ages should study in 
detail every carved figure, every painted window, each 
canopy, each relief, each portal in Amiens, or Chartres, 
Reims, Bourges, Lincoln, or Salisbury, and he will find 
revealed to him more than he can read in a thousand 
books. 

Obviously the thirteenth century is the great age of 
architecture — the branch of art which of all the arts of 
form is at once the most social, the most comprehensive, 
and the most historic. Great buildings include sculpture, 
painting, and all the decorative arts together ; they require 
the co-operation of an entire people ; and they are, in a 
peculiar manner, characteristic of their age. The special 
arts of form are more associated with individual genius. 
These, as was natural, belong to centuries later than the 
thirteenth. But, even in the thirteenth, sculpture gave 
us the peopled portals and the exquisite canopies of our 
northern cathedrals, the early palaces of Venice, and the 
carvings of Nicolas and John of Pisa, which almost antici- 
pate Ghiberti and Donatello. And in painting, Cimabue 
opens in this century the long roll of Italian masters, and 
Giotto was already a youth of glorious promise, before the 
century was closed. 



A SURVEY OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 169 

The literature of the thirteenth century does not, in the 
strict sense of the term, stand forth with such special 
brilliancy as its art, its thought, and its political activity. 
As in most epochs of profound stirring of new ideas and 
of great efforts after practical objects, the energy of the 
age was not devoted to the composition of elaborate works. 
It was natural that Dante should be a century later than 
Barbarossa and Innocent, and that Petrarch of Vaucluse 
should be a century later than Francis of Assisi. But 
the thirteenth century was amply represented, both in 
poetry, romance, and prose history. All of these trace their 
fountain-heads to an earlier age, and all of them were fully 
developed in a later age. But French prose may be said 
to have first taken form in the chronicle of Villehardouin 
at the opening of the century, and the chronicle of Join- 
ville at its close. The same century also added to the 
Catholic Hymnal some of the most powerful pieces in that 
glorious Anthology — the Dies Irce, the Stabat Mater, the 
grand hymns of Aquinas, of Bonaventura, and of Thomas 
of Celano. It produced also that rich repertory of devo- 
tional story, the Golden Legend of Voragine. It was, 
moreover, the thirteenth century which produced the main 
part of the Roman de la Rose, the favourite reading of the 
Middle Ages, some of the best forms of the Arthurian 
cycle, Rutebceuf and the French lyrists, some of the most 
brilliant of the Troubadours, Sordello, Brunetto Latini, 
Guido Cavalcanti, and the precursors and associates of 
Dante. 

As to Dante himself, it is not easy to place him in a 
survey of the thirteenth century. In actual date and in 
typical expression he belongs to it, and yet he does not 
belong to it. The century itself has a transitional, an 
ambiguous character. And Dante, like it, has a transi- 
tional and double office. He is the poet, the prophet, the 



I JO THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

painter of the Middle Ages. And yet, in so many things, 
he anticipates the modern mind and modern art. In actual 
date, the last year of the thirteenth century is the ' middle 
term ' of the poet's life, his thirty-fifth year. Some of his 
most exquisite work was already produced, and his whole 
mind was grown to maturity. On the other hand, every 
line of the Divine Comedy was actually written in the four- 
teenth century, and the poet lived in it for twenty years. 
Nor was the entire vision complete until near the poet's 
death in 132 1. In spirit, in design, in form, this great 
creation has throughout this double character. By memory, 
by inner soul, by enthusiasm, Dante seems to dwell with 
the imperial chiefs of Hohenstaufen, with Francis and 
Dominic, Bernard and Aquinas. He paints the Catholic 
and Feudal world ; he seems saturated with the Catholic 
and Feudal sentiment. And yet he deals with popes, 
bishops, Church, and conclaves with the audacious intel- 
lectual freedom of a Paris dialectician or an Oxford doctor. 
Between the lines of the great Catholic poem we can read 
the death-sentence of Catholic Church and Feudal hie- 
rarchy. Like all great artists, Dante paints a world which 
only subsisted in ideal and in memory, just as Spenser and 
Shakespeare transfigured in their verse a humanistic 
and romantic society such as had long disappeared from 
the region of fact. And for this reason, and for others, it 
were better to regard the sublime Dies Ir<z, which the 
Florentine wanderer chanted in his latter years over the 
grave of the Middle Ages, as belonging in its inner spirit 
to a later time, and as being in reality the dawn of modern 
poetry. 

In Dante, as in Giotto, in Frederick 11., in Edward 1., 
in Roger Bacon, we may hear the trumpet which sum- 
moned the Middle Ages into the modern world. The true 
spirits of the thirteenth century, still Catholic and Feudal, 



A SURVEY OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 171 

are Innocent in., St. Francis, Stephen Langton, Gros- 
setete, Aquinas, Bonaventura, and Albert of Cologne ; 
Philip Augustus, St. Louis, the Barons of Runnymede, 
and Simon de Montfort ; the authors of the Golden 
Legend and the Catholic Hymns, the Doctors of Paris, 
Oxford, and Bologna; the builders of Amiens, Notre 
Dame, Lincoln, and Westminster. 



CHAPTER VI. 

WHAT THE REVOLUTION OF I 789 DID. 1 

'Tout ce que je vois, jette les semences d'une revolution qui arrivera imman- 
quablement. . . . Les Francais arrivent tard a tout, mais enfin ils arrivent. 
. . . Alors, ce sera un beau tapage. Les jeunes gens sont bien heureux; ils 
verront de belles choses.' — Voltaire. 

The movement known as the Revolution of 1789 was 
a transformation — not a convulsion; it was constructive 
even more than destructive ; and if it was in outward 
manifestation a chaotic revolution, in its inner spirit it was 
an organic evolution. It was a movement in no sense 
local, accidental, temporary, or partial ; it was not simply, 
nor even mainly, a political movement. It was an intel- 
lectual and religious, a moral, social, and economic move- 
ment, before it was a political movement, and even more 
than it was a political movement. 

If it is French in form, it is European in essence. It 
belongs to modern history as a whole quite as much as to 
the eighteenth century in France. Its germs began cen- 
turies earlier than the generation of 1789, and its activity 
will long outlast the generation of 1889. It is not an 
episode of frenzy in the life of a single nation. In all its 
deeper elements it is a condensation of the history of man- 
kind, a repertory of all social and political problems, the 
latest and most complex of all the great crises through 
which our race has passed. 

Let us avoid misunderstanding of what we are now 

~^ Fortnightly Review, vol. xlv. N.S. June 1889. 
172 



WHAT THE REVOLUTION OF I 789 DID. 1 73 

speaking. Most assuredly the close of the eighteenth 
century in France displayed a convulsion, a frenzy, a, 
chaos such as the world's history has not often equalled. 
There was folly, crime, waste, destruction, confusion, and 
horror of stupendous proportions, and of all imaginable 
forms. There was the Terror, the Festival of Reason, the 
Reaction, and all the delirium, the orgy, the extravagance, 
which give brilliancy to small historians and serve as rhet- 
oric to petty politicians. Assuredly the revolution closed 
in with most ghastly surprises to the philanthropists and 
philosophers who entered on it in 1789 with so light a 
heart. Assuredly it has bequeathed to the statesmen and 
the people of our century problems of portentous difficulty 
and number. But we are speaking now neither of '93 nor 
of '95, nor of '99, of no local or special incident, of no 
single event, nor of political forms. We are in this essay 
dealing exclusively with 'the ideas of '89,' with the move- 
ment which at Versailles, on 5th May 1789, took outward 
and visible shape. And we are about to deal with it in its 
deeper, social, permanent, and human side, not in its 
transitory and material side. The Seine, the Loire, and 
the Rhone have washed away the blood which once defiled 
their streams, the havoc caused by the orgies of anarchy 
has been effaced, years make fainter the memory of crimes 
and follies, of revenge and jealousy. But the course of 
generations still deepens the meaning of 'the ideas of '89,' 
of the social, intellectual, economic new birth which 
then received official recognition, opening in a conscious 
and popular form the reformation that, in a spontaneous 
form, had Jong been brooding in so many generous hearts 
and profound brains. 

No reading of merely French history, no study of the 
reign of Louis xvi. by itself, can explain this great 
movement — no political history, no narrative of events, 



174 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

no account of any special institution. Neither the degen- 
eration of the monarchy, nor the corruption of the nobility, 
nor the disorder of the administration, nor the barbarism 
of the feudal law, nor the decay of the Church, nor the 
vices of society, nor the teaching of any school, nor all of 
these together — are adequate to explain the revolution. 
They are enough to account for the confusion, waste, con- 
flict, and fury of the contest — i.e. for the explosion. But 
they do not explain how it is that hardly anything was set 
up in France between 1789 and 1799 which had not been 
previously discussed and prepared, that between 1789 and 
1799 an immense body of new institutions and reformed 
methods of social life were firmly planted in such a way that 
they have borne fruit far and wide in France and through 
Europe. Nor do any of these special causes just enumer- 
ated suffice to explain the passion, the contagious faith, 
the almost religious fanaticism which was the inner 
strength of the revolution and the source of its inex- 
haustible activity. What we call the French Revolution 
of 1789, was really a new phase of civilisation announcing 
its advent in form. It had the character of religious zeal 
because it was a movement of the human race towards a 
completer humanity. 

Rhetoricians, poets, and preachers have accustomed us 
too long to dwell on the lurid side of the movement, on its 
follies, crimes, and failures ; they have overrated the rela- 
tive importance of the catastrophe, and by profuse pictures 
of the horrors, they have drawn off attention from its solid 
and enduring fruits. In the midst of the agony it was 
natural that Burke, in the sunset of his judgment, should 
denounce it. But it was a misfortune for the last genera- 
tion that the purple mantle of Burke should have fallen on 
a prophet, who was not a statesman but a man of letters, 
who, with all Burke's passion and prejudice, had but little 



WHAT THE REVOLUTION OF I 789 DID. 175 

of his philosophic power, none of his practical sagacity, 
none of the great Whig's experience of affairs and of men. 
The ' universal bonfire ' theory, the ' grand suicide ' view, 
the ' chaos-come-again ' of a former generation, are seen to 
be ridiculous in ours. The movement of 1789 was far less 
the final crash of an effete system than it was the new 
birth of a greater system, or rather of the irresistible germs 
of a greater system. The contemporaries of Tacitus, 
Trajan, and Marcus Aurelius could see nothing but ruin 
in the superstition of the Galileans, just as the con- 
temporaries of Decius, Julian, and Justinian saw nothing 
but barbarism in the Goths, the Franks, and the Arabs. 

The year 1789, more definitely than any other date 
marks any other transition, marks the close of a society 
which had existed for some thousands of years as a con- 
sistent whole, a society more or less based upon military 
force, intensely imbued with the spirit of hereditary right, 
bound up with ideas of theological sanction, sustained by 
a scheme of supramundane authority; a society based 
upon caste, on class, on local distinctions and personal 
privilege, rooted in inequality, political, social, material, and 
moral ; a society of which the hope of salvation was the 
maintenance of the status quo, and of which the Ten Com- 
mandments were Privilege. And the same year, 1789, saw 
the official installation of a society which was essentially 
based on peace, the creed of which was industry, equality, 
progress ; a society where change was the evidence of 
life, the end of which was social welfare, and the means 
social co-operation and human equity. Union, commun- 
ion, equality, equity, merit, labour, justice, consolidation, 
fraternity — such were the devices and symbols of the 
new era. It is therefore with justice that modern Europe 
regards the date 1789 as a elate that marks a greater 
evolution in human history more distinctly than, perhaps, 



1^6 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

any other single date which could be named between the 
reign of the first Pharaoh and the reign of Victoria. 

One of the cardinal pivots in human history we call this 
epoch, and not at all a French local crisis. The proof of 
this is complete. All the nations of Europe, and indeed 
the people of America, contributed their share to the 
movement, and more or less partook in the movement 
themselves. It was hailed as a new dispensation by men 
of various race ; and each nation in turn more or less 
added to the movement and adopted some element of the 
movement. The intellectual and social upheaval, which 
for generations had been preparing the movement, was 
common to the enlightened spirits of Europe and also to 
the Transatlantic Continent. The effects of the move- 
ment have been shared by all Europe, and the distant 
consequences of its action are visible in Europe to the 
third and the fourth generations. And lastly, all the 
cardinal features of the movement of 1789 are in no sense 
locally French, or of special national value. They are 
equally applicable to Europe, and indeed to advanced 
human societies everywhere. They appeal to men prima- 
rily, and to Frenchmen secondarily. They relate to the 
general society of Europe, and not to specific national in- 
stitutions. They concern the transformation of a feudal, 
hereditary, privileged, authoritative society, based on an- 
tique right into a republican, industrial, equalised, human- 
ised society, based on a scientific view of the Common 
Weal. But this is not a national idea, a French concep- 
tion of local application. It is European, or rather human. 
And thus, however disastrous to France may have been 
the travail of the movement officially proclaimed in 1789, 
from a European and a human point of view it has abiding 
and pregnant issues. May we profit by its good whilst we 
are spared its evil. 



WHAT THE REVOLUTION OF I 789 DID. 



77 



Obviously, the salient form of the revolution was French, 
ultra-French ; entirely unique and of inimitable peculiarity 
in some of its worst as well as its best sides. The de- 
lirium, the extravagances, the hysterics, and the brutalities 
which succeeded one another in a series of strange tragi- 
comic tableaux from 1789 till 1795, were most intensely 
French, though even they, from Caps of Liberty to Fes- 
tival of Pikes, have had a singular fascination for the 
revolutionists of every race. But the picturesque and 
melodramatic accessories of the revolution have been so 
copiously over-coloured by the scene-painters and stage- 
carpenters of history, that we are too often apt to forget 
how essentially European the revolution was in all its 
deeper meanings. 

A dozen kings and statesmen throughout Europe were, 
in a way, endeavouring to enter on the same path as Louis 
xvi. with Turgot and Necker. In spite of the contrast 
between the government of England and the government 
of France, between the condition of English industry and 
that of France, Walpole and Pitt offer many striking points 
of analogy with Turgot and Necker. The intellectual com- 
merce between England and France from (let us say) 1725 
to 1790 is one of the most memorable episodes in the 
history of the human mind. The two generations which 
followed the visit of Voltaire to England formed an intel- 
lectual alliance between the leading spirits of our two 
nations : an alliance of amity, offensive and defensive, sci- 
entific, economic, philosophical, social, and political, such 
as had not been seen since the days of the Greco-Roman 
education or the cosmopolitan fellowship of mediaeval uni- 
versities. Voltaire, Montesquieu, Hume, Adam Smith, 
Franklin, Turgot, Quesnay, Diderot, Condorcet, d'Argen- 
son, Gibbon, Washington, Priestley, Bentham — even Rous- 
seau, Mabli, Mirabeau, and Jefferson — belonged to a 
M 



178 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

Republic of Ideas, where national character and local 
idiosyncrasy could indeed be traced in each, but where 
the essential patriotism of humanity is dominant and 
supreme. 

In England, Pitt ; in Prussia, Frederick ; in Austria, 
Joseph ; in Tuscany, Leopold ; in Portugal, Pombal ; in 
Spain, d'Aranda ; all laboured to an end, essentially sim- 
ilar, in reforming the incoherent, unequal, and obsolete 
state of the law ; in rectifying abuses in finance ; in bring- 
ing some order into administration, in abolishing some of 
the burdens and chains on industry ; in improving the 
material condition of their states ; in curbing the more 
monstrous abuses of privilege ; and in founding at least 
the germs of what we call modern civilised government. 
Some of these things were done ill, some well, most of 
them tentatively and with a naive ignorance of the tre- 
mendous forces they were handling, with a strange child- 
ishness of conception, and in all cases without a trace of 
suspicion that they were changing the sources of power 
and their political constitution. And in all this the rulers 
were led and inspired by a crowd of economical and social 
reformers who eagerly proclaimed Utopia at hand, and 
who mistook generous ideals for scientific knowledge. 
For special causes the great social evolution concentrated 
itself in France towards the latter half of the eighteenth 
century ; but there was nothing about it exclusively 
French. Socially and economically viewed, it was almost 
more English and Anglo-American than French ; intel- 
lectually and morally viewed, it was hardly more French 
than it was English. Hume, Adam Smith, Burke, and 
Priestley are as potent in the realm of thought as Diderot, 
Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Condorcet. And in the realm 
of social reform, Europe owes as much to Bentham, How- 
ard, Clarkson, Franklin, Washington, Pitt, and Frederick, 



WHAT THE REVOLUTION OF I 789 DID. 1 79 

as it does to Turgot, Mirabeau, Girondins, Cordeliers, or 
Jacobins. The ' ideas of '89/ were the ideas of the best 
brains and most humane spirits in the advanced nations 
of mankind. All nations bore their share in the labour, 
and all have shared in the fruits. 

But if the revolution were so general in its preparation, 
why was the active manifestation of it concentrated in 
France ? and why was France speedily attacked by all the 
nations of Europe ? These two questions may be answered 
in two words. In France only were the old and the new 
elements ranged face to face without intermixture or con- 
tact, with nothing between them but a decrepit and de- 
moralised autocracy. And no sooner had the inevitable 
collision begun, than the governments of Europe were 
seized with panic as they witnessed the fury of the revolu- 
tionary forces. In England the Reformation, the Civil 
War, the Revolution of 1689, and the Hanoverian dynasty 
had transferred the power of the monarchy to a wealthy, 
energetic, popular aristocracy, which had largely aban- 
doned its feudal privileges, and had closely allied itself 
with the interests of wealth. During "two centuries of 
continual struggle and partial reform, a compromise had 
been affected in Church and in State, wherein the claims 
of king, priest, noble, and merchant had been fused into a 
tolerable modus vivendi. In France the contrary was the 
case. During two centuries the monarchy had steadily 
asserted itself as the incarnation of the public, claiming 
for itself all public rights, and undertaking (in theory) all 
public duties ; crushing out the feudal authorities from all 
national duties, but guaranteeing to them intact the whole 
of their personal privileges. As it had dealt with the 
aristocracy so it dealt with the Church ; making both its 
tool, filling both with corruption, and giving them in 
exchange nothing but license to exploit the lay common- 



l8o THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

alty. The lay commonalty naturally expanded in rooted 
hostility to the privileged orders, and to the religious 
and hereditary ideas on which privilege rested. It grew 
stronger every day, having no admixture with the old 
orders, no points of contact, having no outlet for its activ- 
ity, harassed, insulted, pillaged, and rebuffed at every 
turn, twenty-six millions strong against two hundred 
thousand ; all distinctions, rivalries, and authority, as 
amongst this tiers e'tat, uniformly crushed by the superin- 
cumbent weight of Monarchy, Church, and Privilege. 

The vast mass of the people thus grew consolidated, 
without a single public outlet for its energies, or the 
smallest opportunity for experience in affairs ; the whole 
ability of the nation for politics, administration, law, or 
war, was forced into abstract speculation and social dis- 
cussion ; conscious that it was the real force and possessed 
the real wealth of the nation ; increasing its resources day 
by day, amidst frightful extortion and incredible barbarism, 
which it was bound to endure without a murmur ; the 
thinking world, to whom action was closed, kept watching 
the tremendous problems at stake in their most naked and 
menacing aspect, without any disguise, compromise, or 
alleviation. And in France, where the old feudal and 
ecclesiastical system was concentrated in its most aggra- 
vated form, there it was also the weakest, most corrupt, 
and most servile. And there, too, in France the tiers etat 
was the most numerous, the most consolidated, the most 
charged with ideas, the most sharply separated off, the 
most conscious of its power, the most exasperated by 
oppression. Thus it came about that a European evolu- 
tion broke out in France into revolution. The social 
battle of the eighteenth century began in the only nation 
which was strictly marshalled in two opposing camps ; 
where the oppressors were utterly enfeebled by corrup- 



WHAT THE REVOLUTION OF 1 789 DID. l8l 

tion ; where the oppressed were fermenting with ideas 
and boiling with indignation. 

The fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries saw the silent 
universal but unobserved dissolution of the old mediaeval 
society. For crusades the soldier took to the puerilities 
of the tournament. The lordly castles fell one by one 
before the strong hand of the king. The humble village 
expanded into the great trading town. The Church was 
torn by factions and assailed by heresies. The musket- 
ball destroyed the supremacy of the mailed knight. The 
printing-press made science and thought the birthright of 
all. The sixteenth century saw a temporary resettlement 
in a strong dominant monarchy and a compromise in 
religion. Whilst the seventeenth century in England 
gave power to a transformed and modified aristocracy, in 
France it concentrated the whole public forces in a mon- 
strous absolutism, whilst nobility and Church grew daily 
more rife with obsolete oppression. Hence, in France, 
the ancient monarchy stood alone as the centre of the old 
system. Beside it stood the new elements unfettered and 
untransformed. It was the simplicity of the problem, the 
glaring nature of the contrast, which caused the intensity 
of the explosion. The old system stood with dry-rot in its 
heart ; the new was bursting with incoherent hopes and 
undefined ideals. The Bastille fell — and a new era 
began. 

Take a rapid survey of France in the closing years of 
the Monarchy. She had not recovered the desolation of 
the long wars of Louis xiv., the Revocation of the Edict 
of Nantes, the banishment of the Protestants, the mon- 
strous extravagance of Versailles and the corrupt system 
which was there concentrated. The entire authority was 
practically absorbed by the Crown, whilst the most incred- 
ible confusion and disorganisation reigned throughout the 



1 82 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

administration. A network of incoherent authorities 
crossed, recrossed, and embarrassed each other through- 
out the forty provinces. The law, the customs, the or- 
ganisation of the provinces, differed from each other. 
Throughout them existed thousands of hereditary offices 
without responsibility, and sinecures cynically created for 
the sole purpose of being sold. The administration of 
justice was as completely incoherent as the public service. 
Each province, and often each district, city, or town, had 
special tribunals with peculiar powers of its own and 
anomalous methods of jurisdiction. There were nearly 
four hundred different codes of customary law. There 
were civil tribunals, military tribunals, commercial tribu- 
nals, exchequer tribunals, ecclesiastical tribunals, and 
manorial tribunals. A vast number of special causes 
could only be heard in special courts : a vast body of 
privileged persons could only be sued before special 
judges. If civil justice was in a state of barbarous com- 
plication and confusion, criminal justice was even more 
barbarous. Preliminary torture before trial, mutilation, 
ferocious punishments, a lingering death by torment, a 
penal code which had death or bodily mutilation in every 
page, were dealt out freely to the accused without the 
protection of counsel, the right of appeal, or even a public 
statement of the sentence. For ecclesiastical offences, 
and these were a wide and vague field, the punishment 
was burning alive. Loss of the tongue, of eyes, of limbs, 
and breaking on the wheel, were common punishments for 
very moderate crimes. Madame Roland tells us how the 
summer night was made hideous by the yells of wretches 
dying by inches after the torture of the wheel. With this 
state of justice there went systematic corruption in the 
judges, bribery of officials from the highest to the lowest, 
and an infinite series of exactions and delays in trial. To 



WHAT THE REVOLUTION OF 1 789 DID. 1 83 

all but the rich and the privileged, a civil cause portended 
ruin, a criminal accusation was a risk of torture and death. 

The public finances were in even more dreadful con- 
fusion than public justice. The revenue was farmed to 
companies and to persons who drew from it enormous 
gains, in some cases, it is said, cent, per cent. The deficit 
grew during the reign of Louis xv. at the rate of four or 
five millions sterling each year; and by the end of the 
reign of Louis xvi. the deficit had grown to eight or ten 
millions a year. But as to the exact deficit for each year, 
or as to the total debt of the nation, no man could speak. 
Louis xv. in one year personally consumed eight millions 
sterling, and one of his mistresses alone received during 
her reign a sum of more than two millions. Just before 
the Revolution the total taxation of all kinds amounted to 
some sixty millions sterling. Of this not more than half 
was spent in the public service. The rest was the plunder 
of the privileged, in various degrees, from king to the 
mistress's lackey. This enormous taxation was paid mainly 
by the non-privileged, who were less than twenty-six mil- 
lions. The nobles, the clergy, were exempt from property- 
tax, though they held between them more than half of the 
entire land of France. The State could only raise loans 
at a rate of twenty per cent. 

With an army of less than 140,000 men, there were 
60,000 officers, in active service or on half-pay, all of them 
exclusively drawn from the privileged class. Twelve thou- 
sand prelates and dignified clergy had a revenue of more 
than two millions sterling. Four millions more was divided 
amongst some 60,000 minor priests. Altogether the privi- 
leged orders, having hereditary rank or ecclesiastical office, 
numbered more than 200,000 persons. Besides these, some 
50,000 families were entitled to hereditary office of a judi- 
cial sort, who formed the 'nobility of the robe.' The 



84 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 



ds, 



trades and merchants were organised in privileged gilds 
and every industry was bound by a network of corporate 
and local restrictions. Membership of a gild was a matter 
of purchase. Not only was each gild a privileged corpora- 
tion, but each province was fiscally a separate state, with 
its local dues, local customs' tariff, and special frontiers. 
In the south of France alone there were some 4000 miles 
of internal customs' frontier. An infinite series of dues 
were imposed in confusion over districts selected by hazard 
or tradition. An article would sell in one province for ten 
times the price it would have in another province. The 
dues chargeable on the navigation of a single river 
amounted, we are told, to thirty per cent, of the value of 
the goods carried. 

But these abuses were trifling or at least endurable when 
set beside the abuses which crushed the cultivation of the 
soil. About a fifth of the soil of France was in mortmain, 
the inalienable property of the Church. Nearly half the 
soil was held in big estates, and was tilled on the metayer 
system. About one-third of it was the property of the 
peasant. But though the property of the peasant, it was 
bound, as he was bound, by an endless list of restrictions. 
In the Middle Ages each fief had been a kingdom of itself ; 
each lord a petty king ; the government, the taxation, the 
regulation of each fief, was practically the national govern- 
ment, the public taxation, and the social institutions. But 
in France, whilst the national authority had passed from 
the lord of the fief to the national Crown, the legal privi- 
leges, the personal and local exemptions, were preserved 
intact. The peasant remained for many practical purposes 
a serf, even whilst he owned his own farm. A series of 
dues were payable to the lord ; personal services were still 
exacted ; special rights were in full vigour. The peasant, 
proprietor as he was, still delved the lord's land, carted his 



WHAT THE REVOLUTION OF 1 789 DID. 1 85 

produce, paid his local dues, made his roads. All this 
had to be done without payment, as cotve'e, or forced labour 
tax. The peasants were in the position of a people during 
a most oppressive state of siege, when a foreign army is in 
occupation of a country. The foreign army was the privi- 
leged order. Everything and every one outside of this order 
was the subject of oppressive requisition. The lord paid no 
taxes on his lands, was not answerable to the ordinary tri- 
bunals, was practically exempt from the criminal law, had 
the sole right of sporting, could alone serve as an officer in 
the army, could alone aspire to any office under the Crown. 
In one province alone during a single reign two thousand 
tolls were abolished. There were tolls on bridges, on ferries, 
on paths, on fairs, on markets. There were rights of warren, 
rights of pigeon-houses, of chase, and fishing. There were 
dues payable on the birth of an heir, on marriage, on the 
acquisition of a new property by the lord, dues payable for 
fire, for the passage of a flock, for pasture, for wood. The 
peasant was compelled to bring his corn to be ground in 
the lord's mill, to crush his grapes at the lord's wine-press, 
to suffer his crops to be devoured by the lord's game and 
pigeons. A heavy fine was payable on sale or transfer of 
the property ; on every side were due quit-rents, rent- 
charges, fines, dues in money and in kind, which could not 
be commuted and could not be redeemed. After the lord's 
dues came those of the Church, the tithes payable in kind, 
and other dues and exactions of the spiritual army. And 
even this was but the domestic side of the picture. After 
the lord and the Church came the king's officers, the king's 
taxes, the king's requisitions, with all the multiform op- 
pression, corruption, and peculation of the farmers of the 
revenue and the intendants of the province. 

Under this manifold congeries of more than Turkish 
misrule, it was not surprising that agriculture was ruined 



1 86 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

and the -country became desolate. A fearful picture of 
that desolation has been drawn for us by our economist, 
Arthur Young, in 1787, 1788, 1789. Every one is familiar 
with the dreadful passages wherein he speaks of haggard 
men and women wearily tilling the soil, sustained on black 
bread, roots, and water, and living in smoky hovels with- 
out windows ; of the wilderness presented by the estates 
of absentee grandees ; of the infinite tolls, dues, taxes, and 
impositions, of the cruel punishments on smugglers, on 
the dealers in contraband salt, on poachers, and deserters. 
It was not surprising that famines were incessant, that the 
revenue decreased, and that France was sinking into the 
decrepitude of an Eastern absolutism. ' For years,' said 
d'Argenson, ' I have watched the ruin increasing. Men 
around me are now starving like flies, or eating grass.' 
There were thirty thousand beggars, and whole provinces 
living on occasional alms, two thousand persons in prison 
for smuggling salt alone. Men were imprisoned by lettres 
de cachet by the thousand. 

This state of things was only peculiar to France by 
reason of the vast area over which it extended, of the sys- 
tematic scale on which it was worked, and the intense 
concentration of the evil. In substance it was common to 
Europe. It was the universal legacy of the feudal system, 
and the general corruption of hereditary government. In 
England, four great crises, that of 1540, 1648, 1688, and 
1 7 14, had very largely got rid of these evils. But they 
existed in even greater intensity in Ireland and partly in 
Scotland ; they flourished in the East of Europe in full 
force ; the corruption of government was as great in the 
South of Europe. The profligacy of Louis xv. was hardly 
worse in spirit, though it was more disgusting than that 
of Charles 11. The feudalism of Germany and Austria 
was quite as barbarous as that of France. And in Italy 



WHAT THE REVOLUTION OF I 789 DID. 1 87 

and in Spain the Church was more intolerant, more de- 
praved, and more powerful. But in France, the whole of 
the antique abuses were collected in their most aggravated 
shape, in the most enormous volume, and with the least 
of compensating check. In England, the persons with 
hereditary rank hardly numbered more than a few hun- 
dreds, and perhaps the entire families of the noble class 
did not exceed two thousand ; in France they exceeded 
one hundred thousand. In England the prelates and dig- 
nified clergy hardly exceeded one or two hundred ; in 
France they numbered twelve thousand. In England the 
entire body of ecclesiastics did not number twenty thou- 
sand ; in France they much exceeded one hundred thousand. 
In England, no single subject had any personal privilege, 
except the trifling personal exemptions of a few hundred 
peers ; no exemption from taxation was known to the law ; 
and no land was free from the king's taxes. In France 
more than half the soil, and two orders, amounting together 
to over two hundred thousand persons, were exempt. In 
England, with trifling exceptions, the old feudal rights had 
become obsolete or nominal. The legal rights of the lord 
had disappeared, along with his castle, in the great Civil 
War. In France the lord retained his social prerogatives 
after losing the whole of his public functions. In Germany, 
in Italy, in Spain, the lord still retained a large part of his 
real power, and had been forced to surrender some definite 
portion of his oppressive privilege. 

But in France, where the whole of the ancient abuses 
existed on a scale and with an organised completeness that 
was seen nowhere else, there was also the most numerous, 
the most enlightened, and the most ambitious body of 
reformers. In presence of this portentous misrule and 
this outrageous corruption, an army of ardent spirits had 
been gathered together with a passionate desire to correct 



1 88 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

it. It was an army recruited from all classes — from the 
ancient nobility, and even the royal blood, from the lords 
of the soil, and the dignitaries of the Church, from lawyers, 
physicians, merchants, artificers ; from sons of the petty 
tradesmen, like Diderot ; from sons of the notary, like 
Voltaire ; of the clock-maker, like Rousseau ; of the canon- 
ess, like d'Alembert ; of the provost, like Turgot ; of the 
marquis, like d'Argenson and Condorcet. This band of 
thinkers belonged to no special class, and to no single 
country. Intellectually speaking, its real source in the 
first half of the century was in England, in English ideas 
of religious and political equality, in English institutions 
of material good government and industry. In the two 
generations preceding 1789, such Englishmen as Boling- 
broke, Hume, Adam Smith, Priestley, Bentham, John 
Howard (one might almost claim part, at least, of Burke 
and of Pitt) ; such Americans as Franklin, Washington, 
and Jefferson; such Italians as Beccaria and Galiani; such 
Germans as Lessing, Goethe, Frederick the Great, and 
Joseph il, had as much part in it as Voltaire, Montesquieu, 
Turgot, Diderot, and Condorcet, and the rest of the French 
thinkers who are specially associated in our thoughts with 
the movement so ill-described as the French Revolution. 

By the efforts of such men every element of modern 
society, and every political institution as we now know it, 
had been reviewed and debated — not, indeed, with any 
coherent doctrine, and utterly without system or method. 
The reformers differed much amongst themselves, and there 
were almost as many schemes of political philosophy, of 
social economy, or practical organisation, as there were 
writers and speakers. But in the result, what we now call 
modern Europe emerged, recast in State, in Church, in 
financial, commercial, and industrial organisation, with a 
new legal system, a new fiscal system, a humane code, and 



WHAT THE REVOLUTION OF I 789 DID. 1 89 

religious equality. Over the whole of Europe the civil 
and criminal code was entirely recast ; cruel punishments, 
barbarous sentences, anomalies, and confusion were swept 
away; the treatment of criminals, of the sick, of the insane, 
and of the destitute was subjected to a continuous and 
systematic reform, of which we have as yet seen only the 
first instalment. The whole range of fiscal taxation, local 
and imperial, external and internal, direct and indirect, has 
been in almost every part of Western Europe entirely 
reformed. A new local administration on the principle of 
departments, subdivided into districts, cantons, and com- 
munes, has been established in France, and thence copied 
in a large part of Europe. The old feudal system of ter- 
ritorial law, which in England had been to a great extent 
reformed at the Civil War, was recast not only in France 
but in the greater part of Western Europe. Protestants, 
Jews, and Dissenters of all orders practically obtained full 
toleration and the right of worship. The monstrous cor- 
ruption and wealth of the remnants of the mediaeval Church 
was reduced to manageable proportions. Public education 
became one of the great functions of the State. Public 
health, public morality, science, art, industry, roads, posts, 
and trade became the substantive business of government. 
These are 'the ideas of '89' — these are the ideas which 
for two generations before '89 Europe had been preparing, 
and which for three generations since '89 she has been 
systematically working out. 

We have just taken a rapid survey of France in its polit- 
ical and material organisation down to 1789, let us take 
an equally rapid survey of the new institutions which 1789 
so loudly proclaimed, and so stormily introduced. 

1. For the old patriarchal, proprietary, de jure theory 
of rule, there was everywhere substituted on the continent 
of Europe the popular, fiduciary, pro bono publico notion 



I9O THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

of rule. Government ceased to be the privilege of the 
ruler ; it became a trust imposed on the ruler for the com- 
mon weal of the ruled. Long before 1789 this general 
idea had been established in England and in the United 
States. During the whole of the seventeenth and eigh- 
teenth centuries English political struggles had centred 
round this grand principle : the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence in 1776 had formulated it in memorable phrases. 
But how little the full meaning of this — the cardinal idea 
of 1789 — was completely accepted even in England, the 
whole history of the reign of George in. may remind us, 
and the second and reactionary half of the careers of 
William Pitt and Edmund Burke. Over the continent of 
Europe, down to 1789, the proprietary jure divino theory 
of privilege existed in full force, except in some petty 
republics, which were of slight practical consequence. The 
long war, the reactionary Empire of Napoleon, and the 
royal reaction which followed its overthrow, made a faint 
semblance of revival for privilege. But, after the final 
extinction of the Bourbons in 1830, the idea of privilege 
disappeared from the conception of the State. In England, 
the Reform Act of 1832, and finally the European move- 
ments of 1848, completed the change. So that throughout 
Europe, west of Russia and of Turkey, all governments 
alike — imperial, royal, aristocratic, or republican as they 
may be in form, exist more or less in fact, and in profession 
exist exclusively, for the general welfare of the nation. 
This is the first and central idea of '89. 

This idea is, in the deeper meaning of the word, repub- 
lican — so far as republican implies the public good, the 
common weal as contrasted with privilege, property, or 
right. But it is not exclusively republican, in the sense 
that it implies the absence of a single ruler ; nor is it nec- 
essarily democratic, in the sense of being direct govern- 



WHAT THE REVOLUTION OF 1 789 DID. 191 

ment by numbers. It is an error to assume that the 
Revolution of 1789 introduced as an abstract doctrine 
the democratic republic pure and simple. Republics and 
democracies of many forms grew out of the movement. 
But the movement itself also threw up many forms of gov- 
ernment by a dictator, government by a Council, constitu- 
tional monarchy, and democratic imperialism. All of these 
equally claim to be based on the doctrine of the common 
weal, and to represent the ideas of '89. And they have 
ample right to make that claim. The movement of '89, 
based on the dominant idea of the public good as opposed 
to privilege, took all kinds of form in the mouths of those 
who proclaimed it. Voltaire understood it in one way, 
Montesquieu in another, Diderot in a third, and Rousseau 
in a fourth. The democratic monarchy of d'Argenson, the 
constitutional monarchy of Mirabeau, the democratic re- 
public of Marat, the plutocratic republic of Vergniaud, the 
republican dictatorship of Danton, even the military dicta- 
torship of the First Consul — were all alike different read- 
ings of the Bible of '89. It means government by capacity, 
not by hereditary title, with the welfare of the whole peo- 
ple as its end, and the consent of the governed as its sole 
legitimate title. 

2. The next grand idea of '89 is the scientific consoli- 
dation of law, administration, personal right, and local 
responsibility. Out of the infinite confusion of inequality 
that the lingering decay of Feudalism during four centuries 
had left in Europe, France emerged in the nineteenth cen- 
tury with a scientific and uniform code of law, a just and 
scientific system of land tenure, an admirable system of 
local organisation, almost absolute equality of persons 
before the law, and almost complete assimilation of terri- 
torial right. The French peasant who in 1789 struck 
Arthur Young with horror and pity, as the scandal of 



192 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

Europe, is now the envy of the tillers of the soil in most 
parts of the continent, and assuredly in these islands. 
The most barbarous land tenure of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, the most brutal criminal code, the most complicated 
fabric ever raised by privilege, which France in 1789 ex- 
hibited to the scorn of mankind, has given way to the 
most advanced scheme of personal equality, to the para- 
dise of the peasant proprietor, and to the least feudalised 
of all codes, which France can exhibit at present. It 
would be far easier to show in England to-day the un- 
weeded remnants of feudal privilege, of landlord law and 
landlord justice, and certainly it is easier to show it in 
Ireland and in Scotland, than it is in France. Territorial 
oppression, the injustice of the land-laws, the burden of 
game, or the customary exactions of the landlord, may be 
found in Ireland, may be found in Scotland, may be found 
in England — but they have absolutely disappeared in 
France. Her eight million peasants who own the soil are 
the masters of their own destiny, for France has now eight 
million kings, eight million lords of the soil. The 20,000 
or 30,000, it may be, who in these islands own the rural 
lands, should ponder when the turn of their labourers will 
come to share in 'the ideas of '89.' 

3. Down to 1789 France exhibited an amazing chaos of 
local government institutions. In the nineteenth century 
she possessed one that was perhaps the most symmetrical, 
the most scientific, and the most adaptable now extant. 
It may well be that under it centralisation has been grossly 
exaggerated and local life suppressed. That, however, is 
a legacy from the old monarchy, and is not the work of 
the Revolution. The idea of '89 is not centralisation, but 
decentralisation. The excessive concentration of power 
in the hands of a prefect is part of the ancient tradition 
of France. The aim of d'Argenson, of Turgot, of Mabli, 



WHAT THE REVOLUTION OF 1 789 DID. 193 

of Malesherbes, was to give free life to local energy, to re- 
strain the abuses of bureaucracy. There is still in France 
an oppressive measure of bureaucracy and a monstrous cen- 
tralisation. But a large part of the continent has adopted 
from her the organic arrangement of subordinate authori- 
ties which the Revolution created, and which may be 
equally adopted by monarchy, empire, or republic ; which 
may be combined with local self-government as well as 
with imperial autocracy. 

4. Much the same may be said of the law which the 
Revolution founded. The Civil Code of France, to which 
so unfairly Napoleon contrived to give his name, was 
neither the work of Bonaparte, nor of the Empire, nor of 
the nineteenth century. It was in substance the work of 
Pothier, of the great lawyers of the eighteenth century, 
from whose writings four-fifths of it is textually taken ; 
and Tronchet, its true author, is essentially a man of the 
eighteenth century. It is true that, compared with some 
modern codes, the Civil Code of France is visibly defec- 
tive. But, such as it is, it has made the tour of Europe, 
and is the basis of half the codes now extant. It was the 
earliest scientific code of modern law, for the Code of 
Frederick belongs to the world of yesterday, and not of 
to-day. The Civil Code of France remains still, with all 
its shortcomings, the great type of a modern code, and is 
a truly splendid fruit of the ideas of '89. 

5. With the Code came in also a scientific recasting of 
the entire system of justice — civil, criminal, commercial, 
and constitutional ; local and central, primary, intermedi- 
ate, and supreme. Within a generation at most, to a 
great extent within a few years, France passed from a 
system of justice the most complex, cruel, and obsolete, 
to a system the most symmetrical, humane, and scientific. 
And that which in England, and in many other countries 

N 



194 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

of Europe, has been the gradual work of a century, was 
reached in France almost at a bound by the generation 
that saw '89. 

6. With a new law there came in a new fiscal system, a 
reform as important, as elaborate as that of the civil code, 
and we must say quite as successful. The financial condi- 
tion of France during the whole of the reigns of Louis xv. 
and Louis xvi. had presented perhaps the most stupendous 
example of confusion and corruption which could be found 
outside a Turkish or Asiatic despotism. It was unquestion- 
ably the direct, primary, material origin of the Revolution. 
It was the main object of the labours of the truest reform- 
ers of the age. D'Argenson, Turgot, Malesherbes, Necker, 
and Mirabeau devoted to the appalling task the best of 
their thoughts and efforts. Before all of them, and before 
all the names of the century, the noble Turgot stands forth 
as the very type of the financial reformer. The condi- 
tions in which he sacrificed his life in vain efforts were too 
utterly bad for even his genius and heroic honesty to pre- 
vail. But the effort was not in vain. The idea of '89 was 
to put an end to the monstrous injustice and plunder of the 
old monarchic and feudal fisc, to establish in its place an 
equal, just, scientific system of finance. Compared with 
English finance, the great triumph of parliamentary govern- 
ment, the financial system of modern France seems often 
defective to us. But as compared with the financial con- 
dition of the rest of Europe, the reforms of '89 have prac- 
tically accomplished the end. 

7. Along with a reformed finance came in a reformed 
tariff, the entire sweeping away of the provincial customs' 
frontier, that monstrous legacy of feudal disintegration, 
and a complete revision of the burdens on industry. Polit- 
ical economy as a science may be said to be one of the car- 
dinal ideas of '89 ; the very conception of a social science, 



WHAT THE REVOLUTION OF 1 789 DID. 195 

vaguely and dimly perceived by the great leaders of thought 
in the eighteenth century, was itself one of the most 
potent causes, and in some ways, one of the most striking 
effects of the Revolution of '89. The great founders of 
the conception of a social science were all prominent chiefs 
of the movement which culminated in that year. Voltaire, 
Montesquieu, Diderot, d'Argenson, Turgot, Quesnay, Con- 
dorcet, were at once social economists and precursors of 
the great crisis. Adam Smith was as much an authority 
in France as he was in England. Political economy and a 
scientific treatment of the national production and con- 
sumption became with the Revolution a cardinal idea of 
statesmen and publicists. We are apt to think that our 
French friends are weak-kneed economists at best, and per- 
versely inclined to economic heresy. It may be so. Our 
free-trade doctrines have been preached to deaf ears, and 
our gospel of absolute freedom makes but little progress in 
France. But it can hardly be denied that the economic 
legislation of France is entirely in accord with economic 
doctrine in France, or that the political economy of the 
State is abreast of the demands of public opinion. 

8. To pass from purely material interests to moral, social, 
and spiritual, we must never lose sight of the splendid fact 
that national education is an idea of '89. A crowd of the 
great names in the revolutionary movement are honourably 
identified with this sacred cause. Voltaire, Montesquieu, 
Rousseau, Diderot, Turgot, Condorcet, d'Argenson, Mira- 
beau, Danton — all felt to the depths of their soul that the 
New Commonwealth could exist only by an enlightened 
people. Public education was the inspiration of the En- 
cyclopaedia ; it was the gospel of '89, and the least tarnished 
of all its legacies to our age. In the midst of the Terror 
and the war, the Convention pursued its plans of founding 
a public education. The idea was in no sense specially 



I96 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

French, in no sense the direct work of the revolutionary 
assemblies. England, America, Germany, Europe as a 
whole, partook of the new conception of the duties of the 
State. It belongs to the second half of the eighteenth cen- 
tury altogether. But of all the enthusiasts for popular edu- 
cation, there are no names which will survive longer in the 
roll of the benefactors of humanity than those of Voltaire, 
Rousseau, Diderot, Turgot, and Condorcet. 

9. With popular education there went quite naturally a 
series of social institutions of a philanthropic sort. Hos- 
pitals, asylums, poor-houses, museums, libraries, galleries of 
art and science, public parks, sanitary appliances, and pub- 
lic edifices were no longer matters of royal caprice, or of 
casual benefaction : they became the serious work of 
imperial and municipal government. Almost everything 
which we know as modern civilisation in these social insti- 
tutions has taken organic shape and systematic form within 
these hundred years. Except for its royal palaces, Paris in 
the opening of the eighteenth century was a squalid, ill- 
ordered, second-rate city. Marseilles, Lyons, Bordeaux, 
had neither dignity, beauty, nor convenience. Except for 
a few royal foundations, neither France, nor its capital, was 
furnished with more than the meagrest appliances of pub- 
lic health and charitable aid. The care of the sick, of the 
weak, of the destitute, of children, of the people, the eman- 
cipation of the negro — all this is essentially an idea of '89. 
10. To sum up all these reforms we must conclude with 
that of the Church. The Church of France in the eigh- 
teenth century, if it were one of the most splendid and the 
most able, was the most arrogant and oppressive survival 
of the old Mediaeval Catholicism. With an army of more 
than 50,000 priests, and some 50,000 persons in monas- 
teries and bound by religious vows, owning one-fifth of the 
soil of France, with a revenue which, in the values of to- 



WHAT THE REVOLUTION OF I 789 DID. 197 

day, approached ten millions sterling, with personal, terri- 
torial, and legal privileges without number, the Gallican 
Church in the age of Voltaire and Diderot was a portent of 
pride, tyranny, and intolerance. A Church which, down to 
1766, could still put Protestants to death with revolting 
cruelty, which is stained with the damning memories of 
Calas and La Barre, which was almost as corrupt as the 
nobility, almost as oppressive as the royalty, which added to 
the barbarism of the ancien regime the savage traditions 
of the Inquisition, which left undone all that it ought 
to have done, and did all that it ought not to have done 
— such a Church cumbered the earth. It fell, and loud 
and great was the crash, and fierce have been the wailings 
which still fill the air over its ruins. The world has 
heard enough and too much of Voltaire's curse against 
I' Infante, of Diderot's ferocious distich, how the entrails of 
the last priest should serve as halter to the last king. No 
one to-day justifies the fury of their diatribes, except by 
reminding the nineteenth century what it was that, in the 
eighteenth century, was called the Church of Christ. The 
Church fell, but it returned again. It revived transformed, 
reformed, and shorn of its pretensions. Its intolerance has 
been utterly stript off it. It is now but one of other en- 
dowed sects. It has less than one-fifth of its old wealth, 
none of its old intolerable prerogatives, and but a shadow 
of its old pretensions and pride. 

The present essay proposes to deal with the social and 
political aspect of the movement of 1789, not with the 
wide and subtle field of the intellectual and humanitarian 
movement which was its prelude and spiritual director. 
But a short notice is needed of the principal leaders of 
thought by whom the social and political work was in- 
spired. For practical purposes they may be grouped 
under four general heads. There was the work of destroy- 



I98 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

ing the old elements, and the work of constructing the 
new. The work was intellectual and religious on the one 
hand, social and political on the other. This suggests a 
fourfold division: (1) the school of thought whereby the 
old intellectual system was discredited ; (2) that by which 
the old political system was destroyed ; (3) those who 
laboured to construct a new intellectual and moral basis 
of society ; and (4) those who sought to construct a new 
social and political system. These schools and teachers, 
writers and politicians, cannot be rigidly separated from 
each other. Each overlaps the other, and most of them 
combine the characteristics of all in more or less degree. 
The most pugnacious of the critics did something in the 
way of reconstructing the intellectual basis. The most con- 
structive spirits of the new world did much both directly 
and indirectly to destroy the old. Critics of the orthodox 
faith were really destroying the throne and the ancient 
rule, even when they least designed it. Orthodox sup- 
porters of radical reforms rung the knell of the mediaeval 
faith as much as that of the mediaeval society. The spirit- 
ual and temporal organisation of human life had grown up 
together ; and in death it was not divided. 

All through the eighteenth century the intellectual 
movement was gathering vitality and volume. From the 
opening years of the epoch the genius of Leibnitz saw the 
inevitable effect the movement must have upon the old 
society ; and, in his memorable prophecy of the Revolution 
at hand (1704), he warned the chiefs of that society to 
prepare for the storm. For three generations France 
seemed to live only in thought. Action descended to the 
vilest and most petty level which her history had ever 
reached. From the death of Colbert, in 1683, until the 
ministry of Turgot, in 1774, France seemed to have lost 
the race of great statesmen, and to be delivered over to 



WHAT THE REVOLUTION OF 1 789 DID. I99 

the intriguer and the sycophant. Well may the historian 
say that in passing from the politicians of the reign of 
Louis xv. to the thinkers of the same epoch, we seem to 
be passing from the world of the pigmies to that of the 
Titans. Into the world of ideas France flung herself with 
passion and with hope. The wonderful accumulation of 
scientific discoveries which followed the achievements of 
Newton reacted powerfully on religious thought, and even 
on practical policy. Mathematics, astronomy, physics, 
chemistry, biology, began to assume the outlined propor- 
tion of coherent sciences ; and some vague sense of their 
connection and real unity filled the mind of all. Out of 
the physical sciences there emerged a dim conception of 
a crowning human science, which it was the grand achieve- 
ment of the eighteenth century to found. History ceased 
to be a branch of literature ; it began to have practical 
uses for mankind of to-day ; and slowly it was recognised 
as the momentous life-story of man, the autobiography of 
the human race. Europe no longer absorbed the interest of 
cultivated thought. The unity of the planet, the community 
of all who dwell on it, gave a new colour to the whole range 
of thought ; and as the old dogmas of the supernatural 
Church began to lose their hold on the mind, the new-born 
enthusiasm of humanity began to fill all hearts. 

The indefatigable genius who was the acknowledged 
leader in the intellectual attack undoubtedly partook in 
a measure of all the four elements just mentioned, and 
his true glory is that, throughout the whole range of his 
varied work, this enthusiasm of humanity glows constantly 
aflame and warms his zeal. The almost unexampled versa- 
tility and fecundity of Voltaire's mind gave his contempo- 
raries the impression of a far larger genius than the test of 
time has been able to concede him. His merit has been 
said to lie in a most extraordinary combination of secondary 



200 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

powers, no one of which was precisely of the highest class. 
He was neither one of the great poets, or observers, or 
philosophers, or teachers of men, though he wielded, and 
for a longer time, the most potent literary power of which 
history tells. Although of the four main schools into which 
the eighteenth century movement may be grouped, Voltaire 
was especially marked out as the leading spirit of the 
intellectual attack, he did not a little to stimulate the con- 
structive task, both in its philosophical and in its social 
side. It is from Voltaire's visit to England in 1726 that 
we must date the opening of the grand movement of '89. 
The accumulating series of impulses which at last forced 
on the opening of the States-General at Versailles began 
with English ideas, English teachers, and English or 
American traditions. 

At the same time (1724-173 1) was formed in the Place 
Vendome with the aid of Lord Bolingbroke, the confrater- 
nity of reformers, to whom he gave the English name of 
club. This was the first appearance in France of an 
institution which has played so large a part in the history 
of Europe, which is destined yet to play an even larger 
part. The Abbe Alari, the Abbe Saint-Pierre, the Mar- 
quis d'Argenson, and their companions in the Club de 
1' Entresol were already, sixty years before the opening of 
Revolution, covering the ground of the social ideas of 
'89, in a vague, timid, and tentative manner, it may be, 
but withal in a spirit of enthusiastic zeal of the better time 
they were not destined to see. 

Of this group of premature reformers, of these precur- 
sors and heralds of '89, none is more illustrious than the 
Marquis d'Argenson, nor is any book more memorable 
than his Reflectiojis on the Government of France (1739). 
Here we have the germ of the democratic absolutism which 
has again and again reasserted its strength in France : 



WHAT THE REVOLUTION OF I 789 DID. 201 

here are the germs of the local administration ; here is the 
first proposal for the symmetrical system of eighty-six 
departments which since 1790 replaced the ancient prov- 
inces with all their anomalies. Here also is the repudia- 
tion by an illustrious noble of the privileges of nobility, 
the condemnation of local restrictions on trade, and the 
dream of a new France where personal equality should 
reign, and where the cultivator of the soil should be lord 
of the land he tilled. 

The chief spirit of the social and political destructives 
was as obviously Rousseau as Voltaire had been the chief 
spirit of the religious destructives. Our business for the 
moment is with neither of these schools and with neither 
of these famous men. As all heterodoxy seemed to be 
latent in the mordant criticism of Voltaire, so all subse- 
quent political anarchy seems to be concentrated in the 
morbid passion of Rousseau. But though Rousseau must be 
regarded as in all essentials a destructive, there are many 
ways in which he had a share in the constructive movement 
of '89. In the splendour of his pleading for education, for 
respecting the dignity of the citizen, in his passion for art, 
in his pathetic dreams of an ideal simplicity of life, in his 
spiritual Utopia of a higher and more humane humanity, 
prophet of anarchy as he was, Rousseau has here and 
there added a stone to th? edifice we are still building 
to-day. 

When we turn to the constructive schools, there we find 
Diderot supreme in the intellectual world, Turgot in the 
political ; whilst Condorcet is the disciple and complement 
of both. With the purely philosophical work of any of 
these three we are not now concerned. Our interest is 
entirely with the social and political question. And at 
first sight it may seem that Diderot has no share in any 
but the philosophical. But this most universal genius had 



202 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

a mind open to all sides of the human problem. His grand 
task the Ejicyclopedie (and we may remember that the first 
idea of it came from an English Encyclopaedia, which it 
was proposed to translate), the Encyclopedic is largely, and 
indeed mainly, concerned with economic and social mat- 
ters. Throughout it runs the potent principle of the unity 
of man's knowledge, of man's life, and of the whole human 
race. Diderot does far more than discuss abstract ques- 
tions of science. He traces out the ramifications of science 
into the minutest and humblest operations of industry. 
In the Encyclopaedia we have installed for the first time on 
authority that conception of modern times — -the marriage 
of Science with Industry. Machines, trades, manufactures, 
implements, tools, processes were each in turn the object 
of Diderot's enthusiastic study. He and his comrades, 
men like Turgot, d'Alembert, Condorcet, felt that the true 
destiny of man was the industrial. They strove to place 
labour on its right level, to dignify its task, and to glorify 
its mission. Never had philosophy been greater than 
when she girt up her robes, penetrated into the workshop, 
and shed her light upon the patient toil of the handicrafts- 
man. For the first time in modern history thought and 
science took labour to their arms. Industry received its 
true honour, and was installed in a new sphere. It was a 
momentous step in the progress of society as much as in 
the progress of thought. 

Chief of all the political reformers, in many things the 
noblest type of the men of '89, is the great Turgot ; he, 
who if France could have been spared a revolution, was 
the one man that could have saved her. After him, 
Necker, a much inferior man, though with equally good 
intentions, attempted the same task ; and the years from 
1 774-1 78 1 sufficed to show that reform without revolution 
was impossible. But the twenty years of noble effort, 



WHAT THE REVOLUTION OF 1 789 DID. 203 

from the hour when Turgot became intendant of Limoges 
in 1 76 1 until the fall of Necker's ministry in 1781, con- 
tained an almost complete rehearsal, were a prelude and 
epitome, of the practical reforms which the Revolution 
accomplished after so much blood and such years of chaos. 
To give the official career of Turgot would be a summary 
of the ideas of '89. The suppression of the corvee, of the 
restrictions on industry, on the resources of locomotion, 
the restoration of agriculture, to reduce the finances to 
order, to diminish public debt, to establish local municipal 
life, to reorganise the chaotic administration, to remove" 
the exemptions of the noble and ecclesiastical orders, to 
suppress the monastic orders, to equalise the taxation, to 
establish a scientific and uniform code of law, a scientific 
and uniform scale of weights and measures, to reform the 
feudal land law, to abolish the feudal gilds and antiquated 
corporations whose obsolete pretensions crushed industry, 
to recall the Protestants, to establish entire freedom of con- 
science, to guarantee complete liberty of thought; lastly, 
to establish a truly national system of education — such 
were the plans of Turgot which for two short years he 
struggled to accomplish with heroic tenacity and elevation 
of spirit. Those two years, from 1 774-1 776, are at once 
the brightest and the saddest in the modern history of 
France. For almost the first time, and certainly for the 
last time, a great philosopher, who was also a great states- 
man, the last French statesman of the old order, held for a 
moment almost absolute power. It was a gigantic task, 
and a giant was called in to accomplish it. But against 
folly even the gods contend in vain. And before folly, 
combined with insatiable selfishness, lust, greed, and arro- 
gance, the heroic Turgot fell. They refused him his 
bloodless, orderly, scientific Revolution; and the bloody, 
stormy, spasmodic Revolution began. 



204 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

To recall Turgot is to recall Condorcet, the equal of 
Turgot as thinker, if inferior to Turgot as statesman. 
Around the mind and nature of Condorcet there lingers 
the halo of a special grace. Sprung from an old baronial 
family with bigoted prejudices of feudal right, the young 
noble, from his youth, broke through the opposition of his 
order to devote himself to a life of thought. Spotless in 
his life, calm, reserved, warm hearted and tender, ' the vol- 
cano covered with snow ' that flamed in his breast, had 
never betrayed him to an outburst of jealousy, vanity, ill- 
humour, or extravagance. The courtly and polished aris- 
tocrat, without affectation and without hysterics, bore 
himself as one of the simplest of the people. The privi- 
leges of the old system, which were his birthright, filled 
him with a sense of unmixed abhorrence. His scepticism, 
vehement as it was, did not spring from intellectual pride 
or from turbulent vanity. He disbelieves in orthodoxy out 
of genuine thirst for truth, and denounces superstition out 
of no alloy of feeling save that of burning indignation at 
its evil works. The Life of Turgot by Condorcet, 1787, 
might serve indeed as prologue to the memorable drama 
which opens in 1789. It was most fitting that the mighty 
movement should be heralded by the tale of the greatest 
statesman of the age of Louis xvi., told by one of its chief 
thinkers. And the fine lines of Lucan, which Condorcet 
placed as a motto on the title-page of his Life of Turgot, 
may serve as the device, not of Turgot alone, but of Con- 
dorcet himself, and indeed of the higher spirits of '89 
together — 

1 Secta fuit servare modum, finemque- tenere, 
Naturamque sequi, patriaeque impendere vitam ; 
Nee sibi, sed toti genitum se credere mundo.' 

* The only party they acknowledged was the rule of good 



WHAT THE REVOLUTION OF I 789 DID. 205 

sense, and to keep firm to their purpose, to submit to the 
teaching of Nature's law, and to offer up their lives for 
their country — holding that man is born not for himself, 
but for humanity in the sum.' He who would understand 
what men mean by 'the ideas of '89' should mark, learn, 
and inwardly digest those two small books of Condorcet, 
the Life of Turgot, 1787, and the Historical Sketch of the 
Progress of the Human Mind, 1795. 

The annals of literature have no more pathetic incident 
than the history of this little book — this still unfinished 
vision of a brain prematurely cut off. In the midst of the 
struggle between Mountain and Gironde, Condorcet, who 
stood between both and who belonged to neither, he who 
had the enthusiasm of the Mountain without its ferocity, 
the virtues and culture of the Girondists without their 
pedantic formalism, was denounced and condemned to death, 
and dragged out a few weeks of life in a miserable conceal- 
ment. There, with death hanging round him, he calmly 
compiled the first true sketch of human evolution. Amidst 
the chaos and bloodshed he reviews the history of mankind. 
Not a word of pain, doubt, bitterness, or reproach is wrung 
from him. He sees nothing but visions of a happy and 
glorious future for the race, when war shall cease, and the 
barriers shall fall down between man and man, class and 
class, race and race, when man shall pursue a regenerate 
life in human brotherhood and confidence in truth. In- 
dustry there shall be the common lot, and the noblest priv- 
ilege. But it shall be brightened to all by a common 
education, free, rational, and comprehensive, with a light- 
ening of the burdens of labour by scientific appliances of 
life and increased opportunity for culture. ' Our hopes,' 
he writes, in that last lyric chapter of the little sketch, 
'our hopes as to the future of the human race may be 
summed up in these three points : the raising of all nations 



206 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

to a common level ; the progress towards equality in each 
separate people ; and, lastly, the practical amelioration of 
the lot of man.' 'It is in the contemplation of such a 
future,' he concludes, 'that the philosopher may find a safe 
asylum in all troubles, and may live in that true paradise, 
to which his reason may look forward with confidence, and 
which his sympathy with humanity may invest with a rap- 
ture of the purest kind.' 

The ink of these pages was hardly dry when the writer 
by death escaped the guillotine to which republicans con- 
demned him in the name of liberty. How many of us can 
repeat a hundred anecdotes of the guillotine, of its victims, 
and its professors, yet how few of us have seriously taken 
to heart the Sketch of Human Progress! The blood is 
dried up, but the book lives, and human progress continues 
on the lines there so prophetically traced. ' I have studied 
history long,' says de Tocqueville, ' yet I have never read 
of any revolution wherein there may be found men of 
patriotism so sincere, of such true devotion of self, of more 
entire grandeur of spirit.' 



CHAPTER VII. 

FRANCE IN I789 AND I 

The year of centenaries has brought us no memento 
more significant than the timely reissue of Arthur Young's 
Travels in France in 1787-89. 2 Europe has seen in this 
century nothing more striking, and hardly any single thing 
more entirely blessed, than the transfiguration of rural 
France from its state under the ancient monarchy to its 
state under the new republic. By good luck an English 
traveller, with rare opportunities and almost a touch of 
genius, traversed every province just on the eve of the 
great crisis, and left to mankind a vivid picture of all he 
saw. 'Vehement, plain-spoken Arthur Young,' says Car- 
lyle, who, in his lurid chapter on the ' General Overturn,' 
has made household words out of several of Arthur's his- 
toric sayings. ' That wise and honest traveller,' says John 
Morley, perhaps, with rather excessive praise, 'with his 
luminous criticism of the most important side of the Revo- 
lution, worth a hundred times more than Burke, Paine, and 
Mackintosh all put together.' 

And now a lady who .has seen more of France than even 
Arthur Young, Miss Betham-Edwards, has given us an 
excellent edition of the famous Travels, so long practically 

1 The Forum, New York, vol. ix. March 1890. 

2 Travels hi France, by Arthur Young, during the years 1787, 1788, 1789, 
with an Introduction, Biographical Sketch, and Notes, by M. Betham- 
Edwards. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1889. Bohn's Standard Library, n.s.; 
also France of To-day, a survey comparative and retrospective, by M. Betham- 
Edwards. London: Rivingtons. 2 vols. 1892-94. 

207 



208 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

inaccessible, with notes, illustrations, references, and a 
vignette picture of rural France in 1889 such as old 
Arthur himself might have limned, had he returned to 
earth and to France to see the great Exhibition. The 
contrast, as we look first on this picture and then on that, 
is the transition we find in a dream or a fairy tale. It is 
as though one rose from the dead. We see the sombre, 
haggard, crushed French peasant of Languedoc, Poitou, 
or Franche Comte, that Lazarus whom the old system 
swathed in cerecloth and entombed, starting forth into life 
from his bonds, and returning to his home, to activity, and 
to freedom. It is the Revolution that has worked this 
miracle. This is the only work of the Revolution that is 
wholly blessed. Here, at any rate, it has destroyed almost 
nothing that was good, and has founded little that is evil. 
'The Revolution,' says the editor of these Travels, 'in a 
few years metamorphosed entire regions.' 

What life, what heart, what ring there was in the racy 
sayings of the fine old boy ! Every one knows that sharp 
word wrung from him even while he was the guest of the 
Duke de la Rochefoucauld : ' Whenever you stumble on a 
grand seigneur, you are sure to find his property a desert.' 
The signs of the greatness of a grand seigneur 'are ' wastes, 
deserts, fern, ling.' ' Oh ! if I was the legislator of France 
for a day, I would make such great lords skip again.' 
' The crop of this country is princes of the blood ; that is 
to say, hares, pheasants, deer, boars.' Schoolboys in France 
can repeat the historic passage about the woman near 
Mars-la-Tour, aged twenty-eight, but so bent and furrowed 
and hardened by labour that she looked sixty or seventy, 
as she groaned out : ' Sir, the taxes and the dues are crush- 
ing us to death ! ' No one, says he, can imagine what the 
French peasant woman has come to look under grinding 
poverty. He tells of ' some things that called themselves 



FRANCE IN I789 AND 1 889. 209 

women, but in reality were walking dunghills'; 'girls and 
women without shoes or stockings.' ' The ploughmen at 
their work have neither sabots, nor feet to their stockings. 
This is a poverty that strikes at the root of national pros- 
perity.' And then comes that scathing phrase which rings 
in the ears of Englishmen to-day : ' It reminds me of the 
misery of Ireland.' 

The poor people's habitations he finds in Brittany to 
be ' miserable heaps of dirt.' There, as so often else- 
where in France, no glass window, scarcely any light ; 
the women furrowed without age by labour. ' One-third 
of what I have seen of this province seems uncultivated, 
and nearly all of it in misery.' 'Nothing but privileges 
and poverty.' And every one remembers what these 
privileges were — ' these tortures of the peasantry ' he 
calls them — of which in one sentence he enumerates 
twenty-eight. 

And now, in 1889, turn to these same provinces, to 
the third generation in descent from these very peasants. 
'The desert that saddened Arthur Young's eyes,' writes 
Miss Betham-Edwards to-day, 'may now be described as a 
land of Goshen, overflowing with milk and honey.' 'The 
land was well stocked and cultivated, the people were 
neatly and appropriately dressed, and the signs of general 
contentment and well-being delightful to contemplate.' 
In one province, a million acres of waste land have been 
brought into cultivation. In five or six years, wrote the 
historian Mignet, ' the Revolution quadrupled the resources 
of civilisation.' Where Arthur Young saw the miserable 
peasant woman, Miss Betham-Edwards tells us that to- 
day the farmers' daughters have for portions 'several 
thousand pounds.' What Arthur Young calls an 'unim- 
proved, poor, and ugly country,' Miss Betham-Edwards 
now finds to be 'one vast garden.' In the landes, where 
O 



210 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

the traveller saw nearly a hundred miles of continuous 
waste, 700,000 acres have been fertilised by canals, and a 
very small portion remains in the state in which he found 
it. 'Maine and Anjou have the appearance of deserts,' 
writes the traveller of 1789. ' Sunny, light-hearted, dance- 
loving Anjou' appears to the traveller of 1889 a model of 
prosperity and happiness. Where he found the peasants 
living in caves underground, she finds neat homesteads 
costing more than 6000 francs to build. In Dauphine, 
where he finds, in 1789, mountains waste or in a great 
measure useless, she finds, in 1889, choice vineyards that 
sell at 25,000 francs per acre. 

And what has done all this ? The prophetic soul of 
Arthur Young can tell us, though a hundred years were 
needed to make his hopes a reality. His words have 
passed into a household phrase where the English tongue 
reaches: 'The magic of property turns sand to gold.' 
'The inhabitants of this village deserve encouragement 
for their industry,' he writes of Sauve, 'and if I was a 
French minister they should have it. They would soon 
turn all the deserts around them into gardens.' ' Give a 
man,' he adds, in a phrase which is now a proverb, 'the 
secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into 
a garden ; give him a nine years' lease of a garden, and 
he will convert it into a desert.' What has made all this 
misery ? he cries again and again ; what has blighted this 
magnificent country, and crushed this noble people ? Mis- 
government, bad laws, cruel customs, wanton selfishness of 
the rich, the powerful, and the privileged. Nothing was 
ever said more true. Arthur Young's good legislator 
came even sooner than he dared to hope, armed with a 
force more tremendous than he could conceive. It was a 
minister greater than any Turgot, or Necker, or Mirabeau ; 
who served a sovereign more powerful than Louis or 



FRANCE IN I789 AND 1 889. 211 

Napoleon. His sovereign was the Revolution ; the min- 
ister was the new system. And the warm-hearted English 
gentleman lived to see his ' great lords skip again ' some- 
what too painfully. The storm has passed, the blood is 
washed out ; but the 'red fool-fury of the Seine' has made 
rural France the paradise of the peasant. 

Let us take a typical bit of the country here and there 
and compare its state in 1789 and in 1889. From Paris 
and Orleans Arthur Young, in 1787, journeyed southward 
through Berri and the Limousin to Toulouse. His diary 
is one cry of pity. ' The fields are scenes of pitiable man- 
agement, as the houses are of misery.' 'Heaven grant 
me patience while I see a country thus neglected, and for- 
give me the oaths I swear at the absence and ignorance 
of the possessors.' 'The husbandry poor and the people 
miserable.' ' The poor people who cultivate the soil here 
are metayers, that is, men who hire the soil without ability 
to stock it — a miserable system that perpetuates poverty 
and excludes instruction.' 

Turn to our traveller of 1889. Berri, says Miss Betham- 
Edwards, has been transformed under a sound land system. 
It has indeed a poor soil ; but, even in the Hriste Sologne,' 
plantations, irrigation canals, and improved methods of 
agriculture are transforming this region. So rapid is the 
progress that George Sand, who died but the other day, 
would hardly recognise the country she has described so 
well. Here and there may be seen, now used as an out- 
house, one of those bare, windowless cabins which shocked 
Arthur Young, and close at hand the 'neat, airy, solid 
dwellings ' the peasant owners have built for themselves. 
Here Miss Betham-Edwards visited newly-made farms, 
with their spick-and-span buildings, the whole having the 
appearance of a little settlement in the Far West. The 
holdings vary from 6 to 30 acres, their owners possessing 



212 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

a capital of 5000 to 8000 and even 25,000 francs, the land 
well stocked and cultivated, the people well dressed, and 
signs of general content and well-being delightful to con- 
template. And as to metayage, 'that miserable system 
which perpetuates poverty,' Miss Betham-Edwards finds it 
now one of the chief factors of the agricultural progress of 
France, creating cordial relations between landlord and 
tenant. The secret of this curious conflict between two 
most competent observers is this : metayage — the system 
under which the owner of the soil finds land, stock, and 
implements, the tiller of the farm finds manual labour, and 
all produce is equally shared — depends for its fair work- 
ing upon just laws, equality before the law, absence of any 
privilege in the owner, and good understanding as between 
men who alike respect each other. With these, it is 
an excellent system of farming, very favourable to the 
labourer ; without these, it may almost reduce him to 
serfdom. It may thus be one of the best, or one of the 
worst, of all systems of husbandry. As Arthur Young 
saw it under the ancient system of privileged orders, it 
was almost as bad as an Irish tenancy at will. Under the 
new system of post-revolutionary equality, it has given 
prosperity to large tracts in France. 

From Autun in Burgundy, Arthur Young travelled 
across the Bourbonnais and the Nivernais, and he found 
the country 'villainously cultivated'; when he sees such 
a country ' in the hands of starving metayers, instead of 
fat farmers,' he knows not how to pity the seigneurs. 
To-day, his editor finds 'fat farmers' innumerable, for 
metayage has greatly advanced the condition of the peas- 
ants. The country that lies between the mouths of the 
Garonne and the Loire is precisely that part of his journey 
which wrings from Arthur Young his furious invective 
against the great lords whom he wished he could make 



FRANCE IN I789 AND 1 889. 213 

'to skip again.' Now, the Gironde, the Charente, and La 
Vendee are thriving, rich districts, intersected with rail- 
ways ; ' and, owing to the indefatigable labours of peasant 
owners, hundreds of thousands of acres of waste land 
have been put under cultivation.' 

Or turn to Brittany, which Arthur Young calls 'a mis- 
erable province ' ; ' husbandry not much further advanced 
than among the Hurons ' ; 'the people almost as wild as 
their country ' ; ' mud houses, no windows ' ; ' a hideous 
heap of wretchedness' — all through 'the execrable max- 
ims of despotism, or the equally detestable prejudices of a 
feudal nobility.' And this is the rich, thriving, laborious, 
and delightful Brittany which our tourists love, where Miss 
Betham-Edwards tells us of scientific farming, artificial 
manures, machinery, 'the granary of Western France,' 
market gardens, of fabulous value, and a great agricultural 
college, one of the most important in Europe. 

Maine and Anjou, through which the Loire flows below 
Tours, were deserts to Arthur Young. Every tourist 
knows that these provinces now look as rich and prosper- 
ous as any spot in Europe. Miss Betham-Edwards gives 
us an almost idyllic picture of an Angevin farm-house, 
with its supper, merriment, and dance ; and tells of Ange- 
vin peasants building themselves villas with eight rooms, 
a flower garden, parlour, kitchen, offices, and four airy 
bedrooms. 'The peasant wastes nothing and spends lit- 
tle ; he possesses stores of homespun linen, home-made 
remedies, oil, vinegar, honey, cider, and wine of his own 
producing.' 'The poorest eat asparagus, green peas, and 
strawberries every day in season ; and as everybody owns 
crops, nobody pilfers his neighbours'.' Universal owner- 
ship gives absolute security to property, and pauperism is 
unknown. 

As in Berri, as in the Limousin, Poitou, Anjou, and 



214 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

Brittany, so elsewhere throughout France, we find the 
same astounding contrast between the tale told by the 
traveller of 1789 and the traveller of 1889. Paris amazes 
Arthur Young by its dirtiness and discomfort, and the 
silence and stagnation of life the instant he passes out of 
its narrow crooked streets ! To those accustomed to the 
animation and rapid movement of England, says he, it 
is not possible to describe ' the dulness and stupidity of 
France ! ' To read these words in the year of the great 
Exhibition, 1889, with its 26,000,000 tickets bought by 
sight-seers ! In Champagne he pronounces his famous 
diatribe against government. Now, we all know Cham- 
pagne to be a thriving and wealthy country. It was in 
Franche Comte that Arthur Young, being surrounded by 
an angry crowd, made his famous speech to them about 
French and English taxation, and explained the difference 
between a seigneur in France and in England. On which 
side would the difference lie, if he rose to make his speech 
in the Doubs to-day ? Arthur Young crosses France from 
Alsace to Auvergne before he sees a field of clover ; but 
in France to-day clover is as common as it is in England. 
Old Marseilles he thinks close, ill-built, and dirty ; and 
'the port itself is a horse pond.' He cannot find a con- 
veyance between Marseilles and Nice. Such great cities 
in France, he says, have not the hundredth part of the 
means of communication common in much smaller places 
in England. He passes into the mountain region of 
Upper Savoy ; -and there he finds the people at their ease, 
and the land productive, in spite of the harsh climate and 
the barren soil. He asks the reason, and he learns that 
there are no seigneurs in Upper Savoy. In Lower Savoy 
he finds the people poor and miserable, for there stands 
a carcan, a seigneurial standard, with a chain and a heavy 
collar, an emblem of the slavery of the people. 



FRANCE IN I789 AND 1 889. 21 5 

At Lyons he meets the Rolands, though he failed to 
recognise the romantic genius that lay still hidden in the 
young and beautiful wife of the austere financier. At 
Lyons he is assured that ' the state of manufacture is 
melancholy to the last degree.' And, as the quarter now 
known as Perrache did not yet exist, he finds the city itself 
badly situated. As he passes along the Riviera from 
Antibes to Nice, he is driven to walk, for want of a con- 
veyance, and a woman carries his baggage on an ass. At 
Cannes there is no post-house, carriage, horses, or mules, 
and he has to walk through nine miles of waste ! And so 
he at last gets back to Paris. There he hears Mirabeau 
thunder in the National Assembly ; meets the King and 
Queen, La Fayette, Barnave, Sieyes, Condorcet, and the 
chiefs of the Revolution ; and is taken to the Jacobin Club, 
of which he is duly installed as a member. And this 
wonderful book ends with a chapter of general reflections 
on the Revolution, which go more deeply down to the root 
of the matter, John Morley has said, than all that Burke, 
Paine, and Mackintosh piled up in so many eloquent 
periods. 

The Revolution as a whole would carry us far afield. 
In these few pages we are dealing with the great transfor- 
mation that it wrought in the condition of the peasant. 
It must not be forgotten that part of the wonderful differ- 
ence between the peasant of the last century and the peas- 
ant of to-day, is due to the vast material advancement 
common to the civilised world. Railroads, steam factories, 
telegraphs, the enormous increase in population, in manu- 
factures, commerce, and inventions were not products of 
the 'principles of '89,' nor of the Convention, nor of the 
Jacobin Club. All Europe has grown, America has grown 
almost miraculously, and France has grown with both. 
But the political lesson of Arthur Young's journey is this : 



2l6 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

the poverty and the desolation which he saw in 1789 were 
directly due, as he so keenly felt, not to the country, not 
to the husbandmen, not to ignorance or to indolence in the 
people, not to mere neglect, weakness, or stupidity in the 
central government, but directly to bad laws, cruel privi- 
leges, and an oppressive system of tyranny. Arthur 
Young found an uncommonly rich soil, a glorious climate, 
a thrifty, ingenious, and laborious people, a strong central 
government that, in places and at times, could make mag- 
nificent roads, bridges, canals, ports ; and when a Turgot, 
or a Liancourt, or a de Turbilly had a free hand, a country 
which could be made one of the richest on the earth. What 
Arthur Young saw, with the eye of true insight, was, that 
so soon as these evil laws and this atrocious system of 
land tenure were removed, France would be one of the 
finest countries in the world. And Arthur Young, as we 
see, was right. 

Another point is this : to Arthur Young, the Suffolk 
farmer of 1789, everything he sees in the peasantry and 
husbandry of France appears miserably inferior to the 
peasantry and husbandry of England. France is a coun- 
try far worse cultivated than England, its agricultural 
produce miserably less ; its life, animation, and means of 
communication ludicrously inferior to those of England ; 
its farmers in penury, its labourers starving, its resources 
barbarous, compared with those of England. In an Eng- 
lish village more meat, he learns, is eaten in a week, than 
in a French village in a year ; the clothing, food, home, and 
intelligence of the English labourer are far above those of 
the French labourer. The country inns are infinitely bet- 
ter in England ; there is ten times the circulation, the 
wealth, the comfort in an English rural district ; the 
English labourer is a free man, the French labourer little 
more than a serf. 



FRANCE IN I789 AND 1 889. 2\J 

Can we say the same thing of 1889? Obviously not. 
The contrast to-day is reversed. It is the English labourer 
who is worse housed, worse fed, clothed, taught ; who has 
nothing of his own, who can never save ; to whom the 
purchase of an acre of land is as much an impossibility as 
of a diamond necklace, and who may no more think to own 
a dairy than to own a race horse ; who follows the plough 
for 'two shillings a day, and ends, when he drops, in the 
workhouse. England has increased in these hundred years 
far more than France in population, in wealth, in com- 
merce, in manufactures, in dominion, in resources, in 
general material prosperity — in all but in the condition of 
her rural labourer. In that she has gone back, perhaps 
positively ; but relatively it is certain she has gone very 
far back. The English traveller in France to-day is amazed 
at the wealth, independence, and comfort of the French 
peasant. To Miss Betham-Edwards, who knows France 
well, it is a land of Goshen, flowing with milk and honey ; 
the life of the peasant of Anjou, Brie, and La Vendee is 
one of idyllic prosperity ' delightful to behold.' The land 
tenure of England in 1789 was, as Young told the mob in 
the Doubs, far in advance of that of France — as far as 
that of France of 1889 is in advance of that of England 
now. Our English great lords have not yet begun 'to 
skip again.' Land tenure in England to-day is essentially 
the same as it was in 1789. In France it has been wholly 
transformed by the Revolution. 

There are in France now some eight million persons who 
own the soil, the great mass of whom are peasants. It is 
well known that the Revolution did not create this peasant 
land-ownership, but that in part it goes back to the earliest 
times of French history. Turgot, Necker, de Tocqueville, 
and a succession of historians have abundantly proved the 
fact. Arthur Young entirely recognises the truth, and 



2l8 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

tells us that one-third of the soil of France was already the 
property of the peasant. This estimate has been adopted 
by good French authorities ; but Miss Betham-Edwards 
considers it an over-statement, and holds that the true 
proportion in 1789 was one-fourth. In any case it is now 
much more than one-half. Not but that there is now in 
France a very great number also of large estates, and some 
that are immense when compared with the standard of 
England proper. It has indeed been estimated that posi- 
tively, though not relatively, there are more great rural 
estates in France to-day than there are in England. The 
notion that the Revolution has extinguished great proper- 
ties in France, is as utterly mistaken as the notion that 
the Revolution created the system of small properties. 
The important point is that since the Revolution every 
labourer has been able to acquire a portion of the soil ; 
and a very large proportion of the adult population has 
already so done. 

It is also likely that Young overrated the depth of the 
external discomfort that he saw. Under such a brutal 
system of fiscal and manorial oppression as was then rife, 
the farmer and the labourer carefully hide what wealth they 
may have, and deliberately assume the outer semblance of 
want, for fear of the tax-gatherer, the tithe proctor, and 
the landlord's bailiff. That has been seen in Ireland for 
centuries and may be still seen to-day. So the French 
peasant was not always so poor as he chose to appear in 
Arthur Young's eyes. 

Another thing is that the French labouring man, and 
still more the labouring woman, is a marvellously penurious, 
patient, frugal creature who deliberately, for the sake of 
thrift, endures hard fare, uncleanness, squalor, such as no 
English or American freeman would stomach except by 
necessity. The life led by a comfortable English or Amen- 



FRANCE IN 1789 AND 1889. 219 

can farmer would represent wicked waste and shameful 
indulgence to a much richer French peasant. I myself 
know a labourer on wages of less than twenty shillings a 
week, who by thrift has bought ten acres of the magnifi- 
cent garden land between Fontainebleau and the Seine, 
worth many thousand pounds, on which grow all kinds of 
fruits and vegetables, and the famous dessert grapes ; yet 
who, with all his wealth and abundance, denies himself and 
his two children meat on Sundays, and even a drink of the 
wine which he grows and makes for the market. I know 
a peasant family in Normandy, worth in houses, gardens, 
and farms, at least 500,000 francs, who will live on the orts 
cast out as refuse by their own lodgers, while the wife and 
mother hires herself out as a scullion for two francs a day. 
The penuriousness of the French peasant is to English 
eyes a thing savage, bestial, and maniacal. 

The French peasant has great virtues ; but he has the 
defects of his virtues, and his home life is far from idyllic. 
He is laborious, shrewd, enduring, frugal, self-reliant, sober, 
honest, and capable of intense self-control for a distant 
reward ; but that reward is property in land, in pursuit of 
which he may become as pitiless as a bloodhound. He is 
not chaste (indeed he is often lecherous), but he relent- 
lessly keeps down the population, and can hardly bring 
himself to rear two children. To give these two children 
a good heritage, he will inflict great hardships on them and 
on all others whom he controls. He has an intense passion 
for his own immediate locality ; but he loves his own com- 
mune, and still more his own terre, almost as much as 
France. He is not indeed the monster that Zola paints 
in La Terre ; but there is a certain vein of Zolaism in him, 
and the type may be found in the criminal records of 
France. He is intelligent ; but he is not nearly so well 
educated as the Swiss, or the German, or the Hollander. 



220 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

He is able to bear suffering without a murmur ; but he 
has none of that imperturbable courage that Englishmen 
and Americans show in a thousand new situations. He is 
shrewd and far-seeing, and a tough hand in a bargain ; but 
he has none of the inventive audacity of the American 
citizen. He is self-reliant, but too cautious to trust him- 
self in a new field. He is independent, but without the 
proud dignity of the Spanish peasant. He has a love for 
the gay, the beautiful, and the graceful, which, compared 
with that of the Englishman, is the sense of art ; though 
he has nothing of the charm of the Italian, or of the 
musical genius of the German. 

Take him for all in all, he is a strong and noteworthy 
force in modern civilisation. Though his country has not 
the vast mineral wealth of England, nor her gigantic de- 
velopment in manufactures and in commerce, he has made 
France one of the richest, most solid, most progressive 
countries on earth. He is quite as frugal and patient 
as the German, and is far more ingenious and skilful. 
He has not the energy of the Englishman, or the 
elastic spring of the American, but he is far more saving 
and much more provident. He 'wastes nothing, and 
spends little'; and thus, since his country comes next to 
England and America in natural resources and national 
energy, he has built up one of the strongest, most self- 
contained, and most durable of modern peoples. 

Since this essay appeared in 1890, Miss Betham-Edwards 
has published her own most valuable and interesting sur- 
vey, her France of To-day, 2 vols., 1 892-94. This book is 
the result of her exhaustive study of French agriculture, 
over twenty-five years. It forms the pendant to Arthur 
Young, and as being a study exactly one hundred years 
later, over the same ground and embodying an even more 
extensive knowledge of France than that of the old trav- 



FRANCE IN I789 AND 1889. 221 

eller, it becomes a work of rare value to the student of 
history and of politics. Miss Betham-Edwards is also the 
well-known author of several other books of travel in 
France ; and her readers rejoice to learn that her life-long 
labours have received most honourable recognition from 
the Government of France as well as that of England. 

Fluctuat nee mergitur should be the motto not of Paris 
but of France. The indomitable endurance of her race 
has enabled her to surmount crushing disasters, losses, 
and disappointments under which another race would have 
sunk. She bears with ease a national debt the annual 
charge of which is more than double that of wealthy Eng- 
land, and a taxation nearly double that of England, with 
almost the same population — a permanent taxation (ex- 
ceeding 100 francs per head) greater than has ever before 
been borne by any people. She loses over one war, 
a sum not much short of the whole national debt of 
England, and she writes off, without a murmur, a loss of 
1,200,000,000 francs, thrown into the Panama Canal. If 
France is thus strong, the backbone of her strength is 
found in the marvellous industry and thrift of her peas- 
antry. And if her peasantry are industrious and thrifty, 
it is because the Revolution of '89 has secured to them a 
position more free and independent than that presented 
by any monarchical country on the continent of Europe. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE CITY: ANCIENT MEDLEVAL MODERN IDEAL. 

The life that men live in the City gives the type and 
measure of their civilisation. The word civilisation means 
the manner of life of the civilised part of the community : 
i.e. of the city-men, not of the country-men, who are called 
rustics, and once were called pagans, or the heathens of 
the villages. Hence, inasmuch as a city is a highly or- 
ganised and concentrated type of the general life of an 
epoch or people, if we compare the various types of the 
city, we are able to measure the strength and weakness of 
different kinds of civilisation. 

How enormous is the range over which city-life extends, 
from the first cave-men and dug-out wigwams in pre- 
historic ages to the complex arrangements and appliances 
of modern Paris (which we may take as the type of the 
highly organised modern city of Europe). How vast is 
the interval between one kind of town-life and another 
kind ! — say comparing Bagdad with Chicago, or Naples 
with Staleybridge. The differences in the humblest forms 
of rural life are far less apparent, whether we deal with dif- 
ferent epochs or different races. The ploughman and the 
shepherd to-day on the Cotswolds, or the Cheviots, cer- 
tainly the tenants of mud-cabins in Connemara or Skye, 
do not, in external modes of material life, differ so greatly 
from their predecessors in the days of the Crusades or 
even of the Heptarchy ; and a herdsman of Anatolia, of 
La Mancha, or of Kerry, eats, sleeps, and works in very 



TH. CITY: ANCIENT MEDIAEVAL MODERN IDEAL. 223 

similar ways. But how vast is the interval between the 
habits and conditions of the Londoners who built the 
Lake-village of Llyn-dyn, or the Parisii who staked out 
the island of Loukhteith, and the modern Londoner and 
the modern Parisian ! 

The change began with the landing on the Thames, or 
the Seine, of a few thousand men in armour from the 
Tiber, led by the greatest genius known to history, who 
introduced the language, law, institutions, and discipline 
of the greatest City recorded in history. In old times some 
of the most famous cities in the world were not so large 
as one London parish, and not nearly so populous. En- 
tire states, which for centuries filled the page of the main 
history of mankind, did not cover so much ground, or con- 
tain so many inhabitants, as do London and Paris to-day. 
The men of Athens, who passed their lives in the midst 
of the noblest creations of art, at the broken fragments 
of which we gaze in wonder and awe, men who heard the 
most sublime tragedies, and took part in the most impos- 
ing ceremonies ever devised by man, had food, garments, 
and lodging so rough and plain that we should hardly 
think it fit for a prison. On the other hand, they had as 
much leisure, were as daintily fastidious in their tastes, 
and regarded themselves as much lords of creation, as if 
they were all officers in the Guards. 

In the Middle Ages, the men who passed their lives in 
these gorgeous cathedrals, of which we only see the col- 
ourless shell to-day, and in that fantastic and chivalrous 
art-life, of which we only catch glimpses in some old cor- 
ner of Verona, Nuremberg, or Florence, lived in streets 
and houses so fetid, cramped, poisonous, and gloomy, 
under conditions so dangerous to life and limb, so full of 
discomfort, that many a prisoner would prefer his warm 
cell in Pentonville. And we, who have railways, tele- 



224 THE CITY IN HISTORY. C 

phones, and newspapers, who make everything by machin- 
ery, except beauty and happiness — we who cannot drink 
a glass of water, or teach children to read and write with- 
out an army of inspectors, Acts of Parliament, and ama- 
teur Professors of Social Science, to show us how to do 
it — we who, in a man's lifetime, cover with new bricks a 
whole province, in area bigger than the Attica of Pericles, 
or the Roman State of Coriolanus : — we lead, in some of 
our huge manufacturing cities, lives so dull and mechani- 
cal that Pericles or Coriolanus would have preferred exile. 
Out of a vast range of cities, old and new, it would be 
instructive to compare four types : the Ancient city of 
Greece and Italy — the Mediaeval city of Catholic and 
Feudal times — the Modern city of England, France, and 
America — and then the Ideal city, as we can conceive it 
to be, in the future. Each age has its strong side, and its 
weak side. It would be impossible to bring back any 
obsolete type of society : but things may be learned from 
some of them. And, where we have horrible evils of our 
own to conquer, it may be just as well to reflect on a very 
different type of life, under other conceptions of nature 
and of man. 

I. The Ancient City. 

Let us imagine ourselves citizens of some famous city 
of Greece or Italy in the earlier ages before the Roman 
empire — such a city as Athens, Corinth, Syracuse, or 
Rome some centuries before Christ. Our city would be 
at once our Country, our Church, our Religion — our 
school, academy, and university, — our museum, our trade- 
gild, our play-ground, and our club. The city would have 
been founded by some god or demi-god, with mysterious 
and half-uttered legends about its origin ; and the knowl- 



THE ANCIENT CITY. 225 

edge of these was thought to be confined to a select few, 
who were quite unable or unwilling to divulge it, legends 
preserved by quaint rites and traditional ceremonials that 
all reverenced and none could explain. The city would 
be, not only the special creation but the favourite home of 
some great god ; it would be also the chosen abode of a 
company of minor gods and heroes whose images, altars, 
sanctuaries, groves, fountains, caves, or rocks, would lie 
thickly around and be chiefly grouped about the citadel. 
There would be the olive that sprang from the ground at 
the stroke of Athene's spear, the water of some nymph, 
the oracular cave of some prophet, the eternal fire, the 
stone that fell from heaven, the lair of the sacred serpent, 
the rude bronze or oaken fetish, and all the mysteries of 
the Holy of Holies in the upper or inner city. 

The citizen was born to the privilege of these gods : his 
city and its worship and rites formed an inalienable relig- 
ion which no man could acquire, no man could put off. 
A man could not change his city, except under rare and 
difficult conditions ; if he left this city he became an out- 
cast and an outlaw, a man without legal rights or religious 
privileges, unless so far as he was protected or adopted by 
some new household or gild. To be banished from one's 
city was a sort of civil death ; moral and spiritual degra- 
dation, with some of the effects of excommunication and 
outlawry at once. If a man came to a city not his own 
for pleasure or business, he remained a sojourner and a 
foreigner, without the rights of citizenship, in a state be- 
tween a citizen and a slave ; and his condition was less 
pleasant and secure than is that of a Chinese coolie in 
California or Victoria. 

To the free-born citizen, his City was his Church and his 
Country, his home and his society. The worship of the 
gods consisted in a constant succession of public cere- 
P 



226 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

monies which combined artistic display with civic festival. 
To all of these the citizen was free, and no business or 
work was allowed to interfere with the social and religious 
duty of attending what was at once divine service and 
patriotic function. The southern climate usually enabled 
him to enjoy all these in the open air or under a covered 
portico — pictures, statues, processions, lectures, hymns, 
sacrifices, musical celebrations, were all to be found in 
public places or open colonnades. The piety and public 
spirit of the opulent noble filled each market-place or 
street corner with a work of art, a shrine, a statue, a foun- 
tain or a portico. There were no museums, because the 
city, its temples, and forum were a continuous museum, 
open at all times and without fee or ticket. The theatres 
were in buildings hollowed out of the rock or open to the 
sky, and were practically free of charge. Exhibitions of 
skill, dancing, the singing in chorus of hymns, processions 
on horse and foot, chariot races and horse races, even com- 
bats with beasts and pantomimes were, in origin and in 
theory, religious ceremonies, and as such were open and 
gratuitous in practice. 

It was a civic obligation of the rich and well-born to 
offer these artistic displays and these means of religious 
worship to their fellow-citizens ; and it was part of the 
inheritance they derived from their ancestors and their 
ancestral deities. These leitourgies were the tribute that 
the rich paid to the state and to the patron gods of their 
family and the shades of their forefathers. That which 
began as a sacred 'duty to family and to the Powers above 
and below gradually became a sort of public tax or civic 
obligation to their countrymen. They were expected to 
provide plays, festivals, illuminations, races, concerts, foun- 
tains, baths, temples, and works of art. At Rome they 
pleaded the causes of their clients in the law-courts, pro- 



THE ANCIENT CITY. 22? 

tected them in difficulty, and ultimately supported them 
in need, they threw open their gardens, and often they 
bequeathed their mansions, gardens, estates, and wealth 
to the city as their heirs. The wealthy and the ambi- 
tious were expected to take the lead in peace and in war, 
in matters sacred or profane, in art and in law. On the 
great festivals and civic gatherings they were called on 
to make what are called in the States public ' orations ' in 
honour of the city, its sons, and its deities. Public men 
in Europe, like ' prominent citizens ' in America, are also 
accustomed to make ' orations ' ; and Lord Rosebery or 
Mr. Balfour can hardly play a game or eat a dinner with- 
out being called on for a few words. But at Athens or at 
Rome, it was a more serious and perhaps a more artistic 
performance than our after-dinner witticisms. And those 
who stood in the forum and listened to Pericles and to 
Demosthenes, to Scipio and to Cicero, took home more 
material for thought and a higher standard of public 
debate than what we usually carry away with us from 
a crowded town's-meeting. 

Men did not make speeches in public meetings in order 
'to get into Parliament ' : because every adult citizen was 
himself a member of Parliament, or at least a legislator. 
At set times, the citizens were gathered in the agora or 
forum round the bema or rostrum, listened to those who 
addressed them, and then and there voted decrees and 
made laws. In many Greek cities any citizen had a right 
to stand up and propose a decree or a law or amendment ; 
and if he could persuade his fellow-citizens, or such of 
them as chose to attend the meeting, his proposition was 
at once carried out. A citizen's trade or profession, if he 
had one, was practically determined by custom ; and, as a 
rule, it could not be exercised freely in any other way or 
in other place. The public places, gardens, temples, colon- 



228 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

nades, and monuments were perpetually thronged with citi- 
zens who knew each other by sight and name, who spent 
their lives in a sort of open-air club, talking politics, art, 
business, or scandal — criticised Aristophanes' last comic 
opera and Cicero's furious attack on Clodius. And in the 
cool of the day they gathered to see the young lads 
wrestle, race, leap, and box, cast the javelin or the stone; 
and the younger warriors practised feats with their horses 
or with the spear and the shield. 

Of course such a city was of moderate size. No city in 
Greece proper exceeded in size such cities as Edinburgh 
or York ; and most of them were of smaller area than 
Lincoln and Oxford. Even Rome, Syracuse, and Alexan- 
dria, the largest cities of the ancient world, were not so 
vast but what one could walk round their outer walls in a 
summer afternoon. In Greece and Italy, every consider- 
able city was beautiful and set in a beautiful site — with 
a central citadel crowned with porticoes, colonnades, and 
temples ; and in some cities, such as Athens, Corinth, 
Ephesus, Byzantium, Sparta, Corcyra, Naples, Ancona, 
Rome, with a panorama of varied splendour. Within the 
walls there would be ample space for gardens, groves, parks, 
and exercise grounds ; and on issuing from the walls with- 
out, the open country at once presented itself, where game 
could be chased or the mountain-side could be roamed. 
There were no leagues of dull and grimy suburbs, no acres 
of factories and smoky furnaces, fetid streams, and squalid 
wastes ; there was no drunkenness in the streets, and 
practically no rates and taxes and no poor-houses. 

Health was a matter of religion, and it was vastly pro- 
moted by this, that cleanliness and sanitary discipline was 
a religious duty as well as an affair of personal pride. It 
remained a religious duty and a poetic sentiment after 
definite belief in local gods had become a mere convention 



THE ANCIENT CITY. 229 

or a phrase. To defile the precincts of the city, and almost 
every open corner of it was consecrated to some deity or 
hero, was to outrage the powers of heaven or of earth ; to 
cast refuse or sewage into a stream was to incur the wrath 
of some river-god ; to pollute one of the city fountains was 
to offer sacrilege to some water-nymph. To bring disease 
into some public gathering was to insult the gods and 
demi-gods ; to place the dead within the precincts of a 
temple, or to bury the dead within the city, or in contact 
with human habitations, to leave the dead or any human 
remains unburied or scattered about in public places and 
abandoned as carrion, would have seemed to a Greek or a 
Roman the last enormity of blasphemous horror. 

To wash, to shampoo the skin daily, to trim and anoint 
the hair, to scour the clothes (and the Roman toga was 
made of white wool which needed endless scouring), to 
brush, paint, and limewash the walls and floors, to cleanse 
the public thoroughfares, to get rid of every form of un- 
cleanness and refuse — this was a religious, social, domestic, 
and personal duty : to effect which were concentrated 
almost all the impulses that we know as obedience to the 
Deity, social decency, family pride, and the being a gentle- 
man and a lady. A Greek who should have submitted to 
live in the bestial uncleanness, the fetid atmosphere, and 
the polluted water supply to which we condemn such 
masses of the labouring people of our vast cities, would 
have felt himself a rebel against the gods above, and an 
outcast from the fellowship of decent citizens. The Greek 
word for 'gentleman' is KaAo/cayadcs, which literally means 
the 'beautiful and the good,' and which, perhaps, came to 
mean in practice the clean and 'the nice,' as we say, gens 
comme ilfaut, as the French say, ' the well-washed ' and ' the 
respectable.' No Greek could think himself 'respectable' 
or 'nice,' unless he were constantly scouring, scraping, 



23O THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

washing, polishing, and anointing his person, his clothes, 
his house, and his utensils. And the women were almost 
as active as the men in the daily use of the bath. 

The habit of constant discussion and witnessing shows 
grew on the Greeks, as the habit of bathing gre\v on the 
Romans, until these things became a mania to which their 
lives were given up. Whole rivers were brought down 
from the mountains in aqueducts, and ultimately in the 
Roman empire the city population spent a large part of 
their day in the public baths — buildings as big as St. 
Paul's Cathedral and of magnificent materials and adorn- 
ment — where 5000 persons could meet and take their air- 
bath in what was club, play-ground, theatre, lee cure-hall, 
and promenade at once. Such was the classical religion 
of cleanliness, of which the Musulman has inherited some 
traditions, and of which Europe in our own generation is 
beginning to revive the practice. The excess of this skin 
deep purification of the body led to a melancholy reaction, 
when Christianity denounced it as sinful, and reconsecrated 
Dirt, the natural state of primitive man ; until at last in 
the ages of faith we had uncleanness of the body regarded 
as the purity of the soul, and a man was exalted to be 
saint when he was found to have made himself a mass of 
vermin. 

The obverse to the bright picture of the Ancient City 
was dark enough. If the citizens engaged in war, and war 
was always, until the consolidation of empire by Rome, 
a possible event, defeat meant the risk of having the city 
razed to the ground, or turned into an open village ; some- 
times a general massacre, or slavery for man and woman. 
Or, if in domestic politics, a crisis occurred, which with 
us means a change of government, in Greece or Italy it 
might imply to the losers at the ballot confiscation and 
exile ; and the defeated party, be they democrat or aristo- 



THE ANCIENT CITY. 23 I 

crat. lost home and country, and became outcasts and out- 
laws until they could get a reversal of the sentence. 
Furthermore, it must be remembered that the full privileges 
of citizen belonged only to a portion of the inhabitants of 
the city — a portion which might not exceed one-tenth, 
whilst ninety per cent, of the actual dwellers within the 
walls might be slaves, freedmen, aliens, strangers, clients, 
and camp-followers. And the slaves in the public service, 
in the mines and factories, or in the farms, docks, ships, 
or warehouses led a life too often of appalling misery and 
toil. Even the household slaves who shared the intimacy 
of their master or mistress, who were often their superiors 
in culture and refinement, were liable to horrible punish- 
ments, to bodily and moral degradation, and to any cruelty 
or insult which brutality and caprice might inflict. During 
the brilliant age at Greece, and at last under the empire 
at Rome, domestic life in our modern sense was stunted 
or corrupt. At Greece, the wife was too often the drudge 
or the appendage of the household ; at Rome, she too often 
became the tyrant. Female society in its higher meaning 
was unknown, unless in a depraved sense. Vice, indolence, 
indecency, were not only things not involving shame, but 
things which in an elegant form were a matter of public 
pride. 

Thus this apotheosis of the City had both black and 
brilliant sides. But there is no essential connexion be- 
tween its bright and its dark aspect. This religious 
veneration of the City, this worship of the City as the 
practical type of religion, was extravagant, anti-social, and 
inhuman in the wider sense of patriotism and human duty. 
But it had elements of fixity, of dignity, of reality, and of 
moral and religious fervour, that are wholly unknown to 
our city life, inconceivable even by us, elements to which 
our tepid Patriotism makes but a feeble approach. The 



232 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

citizens were not indeed the members of a great nation, 
but a very close, jealous, and selfish civic aristocracy. 
Within their own order they gave the world fine examples 
of equality, simplicity, sociability, and public devotion, 
such as are hardly intelligible to modern men, such as no 
republican enthusiasm has ever in modern days attempted 
to revive. In the horror of dirt and the religion of per- 
sonal health and perfection, they gave the world inimitable 
examples at which we look back in wonder and awe. For 
the love of beauty we have taken to us the love of com- 
fort ; for the profusion of art we have substituted material 
production ; for the religio loci we prefer the vague immen- 
sities of the Universe ; in place of public magnificence 
and social communion, we make idols of our domestic 
privacy and private luxuriousness. 



II. The Mediceval City. 

We turn to imagine some city of the Middle Ages. 
Here also would be as in an ancient city, a long circuit of 
walls, with gates and towers, a military and highly organ- 
ised society, a complex religious system, intense civic 
pride and patriotism. And yet the differences are vast. 
The grand difference of all is that the city is no longer 
the State, except in some parts of Italy, and even there 
not in the early Middle Ages. In the early Middle Ages, 
the city is not the State or the nation : it is only a strong- 
hold, or fortified magazine in the barony, duchy, kingdom, 
or empire. It is only a big and very complicated castle, 
with its defensive system exactly like any other castle, 
governed by a mayor, bailiff, or prior, and the burgher 
council, and not necessarily by a feudal lord. Except in 
Italy and a few free towns along the Mediterranean at 



THE MEDIAEVAL CITY. 



233 



particular periods, no city counted itself as wholly outside 
the jurisdiction of some overlord, king, or emperor. 

Apart from its political and legal privileges, a mediaeval 
city was something like Windsor Castle or the Tower of 
London, on a large scale and with many subdivisions, 
governed by an elected corporation and not by a baron or 
viceroy. The ancient city, however much it had to fear 
war and opposition from its rival cities or states, could feel 
safe within its own territories from any attack on the part 
of its rural neighbours, .subjects, or fellow-citizens. There 
it was mistress, or rather the city included the territory 
around it. No Athenian ever dreamed of being invaded 
by the inhabitants of Attica, or even of Bceotia. No 
Roman troubled himself about Latians or Etruscans other 
than the citizens of Latian or Tuscan cities. City life in 
the Middle Ages was a very different thing. Until a 
mediaeval city became very strong and had secured round 
itself an ample territory, it was always in difficulties with 
the lords of neighbouring fiefs and castles. Even in Italy, 
before the great cities had crushed the feudal-lords and 
had forced them to become citizens, the mediaeval cities 
had constantly to fight for their existence against chiefs 
whose castles lay within sight. The ancient city was a 
State — the collective centre of an organised territory, 
supreme within it, and owing no fealty to any other sover- 
eign, temporal or spiritual, outside its own territory. The 
mediaeval city was only a privileged town within a fief or 
kingdom, having charters, rights, and fortifications of its 
own ; but, both in religious and in political rank, bound 
in absolute duty to far distant and much more exalted 
superiors. 

Partly as a consequence of its being in constant danger 
from its neighbours, it had a defensive system vastly more 
elaborate than that of ancient cities. Its outer walls were 



234 THE CITY 1N HISTORY. 

of enormous height, thickness, and complexity. They 
were flanked with gigantic towers, gates, posterns, and 
watch-towers ; it had a broad moat round it and a com- 
plicated series of drawbridges, stockades, barbicans, and 
outworks. We may see something of it in the old city 
of Carcassonne in the south of France, destroyed by 
St. Louis in 1262, in the walls of Rome round the Vatican, 
and in the old walls of Constantinople on the western side 
near the Gate of St. Romanus. From without the Medi- 
aeval City looked like a vast castle. And the military 
discipline and precautions were entirely those of a castle. 
In peace or war, it was a fortress first, and a dwelling- 
place afterwards. This vast apparatus of defence cramped 
the space and shut out light, air, and prospect. Few 
ancient cities would have looked from without like a 
fortress ; for the walls were much lower and simpler, in 
the absence of any elaborate system of artillery. But the 
Mediaeval City with its far loftier walls, towers, gates, and 
successive defences looked more like a prison than a town, 
and indeed to a great extent it was a prison. There could 
seldom have been much prospect from within it, except of 
its own walls and towers ; there were few open spaces, 
usually there was one small market-place, no public gar- 
dens or walks ; the city was encumbered with castles, 
monasteries, and castellated enclosures ; and the bridges 
and quays were crowded with a confused pile of lofty 
wooden houses ; and, as the walls necessarily ran along 
any sea or river frontage that the city had, it was impos- 
sible to get any general view of the town, or to look up or 
down the river for the closely-packed buildings on the 
bridges. 

As a rule there was no citadel as in the ancient cities, 
though there was sometimes an upper and a lower town, 
and often a castle in one corner or side of the city, as 



THE MEDIEVAL CITY. 235 

the Tower is at London and the Bastille was at Paris, 
St. Angelo at Rome, or Blachernae and the Seven Towers 
at Constantinople. The place of citadel was usually occu- 
pied by some vast central cathedral or abbey ; which, with 
its adjuncts, occupied nearly one-tenth of the whole area 
in such cities as Lincoln, York, Amiens, Reims, Orvieto; 
and even in cities like Florence, Paris, Rouen, London, 
Antwerp, and Cologne, stood out in the far distance tower- 
ing over the city as did the Acropolis at Athens or the 
Capitol at Rome. Within the walls, and around the walls 
for a distance of many miles, was a profusion of churches, 
abbeys, nunneries, chapels, oratories, varying from such 
enormous piles as those of Westminster, of 67. Germain 
des Pres, St. Peter's and the Vatican at Rome, to the 
smallest chantry on the pier of a bridge where a benison 
could be said. 

Many of these churches were far larger than the ancient 
temples ; and if their architecture had not the stately and 
simple dignity of the Doric fane, they were far richer in 
varied works of art, more gorgeous in colour, and infinitely 
more charged with religious and aesthetic impression. 
Painting, fresco, mosaic, stained glass, gilding, carved 
statues, coloured marbles, images and reliefs in thousands, 
chased gold and silver utensils, bronzes, ivories, silks, vel- 
vets, tapestries, embroideries, illuminated books, carved 
wood, bells, clocks, perfumes, organs, instruments, choirs 
of singers — every beautiful and delightful thing was 
crowded together, with the relics of saints, the tombs of 
great men, the graves of citizens for centuries, wonder- 
working pictures, miraculous images, lamps and candles 
on a thousand altars, chapels, offerings and images dedi- 
cated to countless saints, martyrs, and holy men. A 
mediaeval Church, however much it lacked the austere 
simplicity and faultless symmetry of a Greek temple, was 



236 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

as much deeper and more full in its solemnity and power, 
as the Catholic mythology was deeper and nobler than the 
classical mythology. 

So too the Church was morally a far nobler thing than 
the Temple. It was no mere colonnade for processions, 
lounging, and society. It was this, but much more also. 
It was school, art-museum, music-hall, place of personal 
prayer, of confession of sin, preaching, teaching, and civil- 
ising. It combined what at Athens was to be sought in 
Parthenon, Theseum, Theatre, Academus, Stoa, and Agora 
— and very much beside which was never known at Athens 
at all — sacrament, confession, penance, sermon. A Medi- 
aeval city was full of such centres of moral and spiritual 
education ; and in and around such cities as Rome, Paris, 
and London, the religious edifices of all kinds were counted 
not by hundreds, but by thousands. Every great mediaeval 
city contained its monasteries, nunneries, hospices, and 
colleges, vast ranges of foundations that were at once 
schools, training colleges, hospitals, refuges, and poor- 
houses. Here was the grand difference between the an- 
cient and the mediaeval city. Within the city, there were 
now no slaves, no serfs, no abject and outlaw caste of any 
kind, except the Jews who formed a separate city of their 
own. All citizens were free : all without exception had 
rights of some kind. The churches, monasteries, hospi- 
tals, and schools existed, in original design, mainly for the 
poor, the wretched, and the diseased. Christ loved the 
weak and the suffering. And the doors of His house stood 
ever open to the weak, the suffering, the halt, the blind, 
and the lame. The church of the Middle Ages suffered 
little children to come unto Him. The poorest, the weak- 
est, the most abject, were welcome there. The Priest, the 
Monk, the Nun taught, clothed, and nursed the children 
of the poor, and the suffering poor. The leper was tended 



THE MEDIAEVAL CITY. 237 

in lazar-houses, even it might be by kings and princesses, 
with the devotion of Christian self-sacrifice. For the first 
time in history there were schools, hospitals, poor-houses, 
for the most lowly, compassion for the most miserable, 
and consolation in Heaven for those who had found earth 
a Hell. 

The old Greek and Roman religion of external cleanness 
was turned into a sin. The outward and visible sign of 
sanctity now was to be unclean. No one was clean : but 
the devout Christian was unutterably foul. The tone of 
the Middle Ages in the matter of dirt was a form of mental 
disease. Cooped up in castles and walled cities, with nar- 
row courts and sunless alleys, they would pass day and 
night in the same clothes, within the same airless, gloomy, 
windowless, and pestiferous chambers ; they would go to 
bed without night clothes, and sleep under uncleansed 
sheepskins and frieze rugs ; they would wear the same 
leather, fur, and woollen garments for a lifetime, and even 
for successive generations ; they ate their meals without 
forks, and covered up the orts with rushes ; they flung 
their refuse out of the window into the street or piled it 
up in the back-yard ; the streets were narrow, unpaved, 
crooked lanes through which, under the very palace tur- 
rets, men and beasts tramped knee-deep in noisome mire. 
This was at intervals varied with fetid rivulets and open 
cesspools ; every church was crammed with rotting corpses 
and surrounded with graveyards, sodden with cadaveric 
liquids, and strewn with disinterred bones. Round these 
charnel houses and pestiferous churches were piled old 
decaying wooden houses, their sole air being these deadly 
exhalations, and their sole water supply being these pol- 
luted streams or wells dug in this reeking soil. Even in 
the palaces and castles of the rich the same bestial habits 
prevailed. Prisoners rotted in noisome dungeons under 



238 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

the banqueting hall ; corpses were buried under the floor 
of the private chapel ; scores of soldiers and attendants 
slept in gangs for months together in the same hall or 
guard-room where they ate and drank, played and fought. 
It is one of those problems which still remain for histo- 
rians to solve — how the race ever survived the insanitary 
conditions of the Middle Ages, and still more how it was 
ever continued — what was the normal death-rate and the 
normal birth-rate of cities ? The towns were no doubt 
maintained by immigration, and the rural labourer had the 
best chance of life, if he could manage to escape death by 
violence or famine. 

With all this, there was about the great cities of the 
Middle Ages a noble spirit of civic life and energy, an 
ever-present love of Art, a zeal for good work as good 
work, and a deep under-lying sense of social duty and 
personal faithfulness. A real and sacred bond held the 
master and his apprentices together, the master workman 
to his men, the craftsman to his gild-brethren, the gild- 
men in the mass as a great aggregate corporation. Each 
burgher's house was his factory and workshop, each house, 
each parish, each gild, each town had its own patron saint, 
its own special church, its own feudal patron, its corporate 
life, its own privileges, traditions, and emblems. Thus 
grew up for the whole range of the artificer's life, for the 
civic life, for the commercial life, a profound sense of con- 
secrated rule which amounted to a kind of religion of In- 
dustry, a sort of patriotism of Industry, an Art of Industry, 
the like of which has never existed before or since. It 
was in ideal and in aim (though alas ! not often in fact) 
the highest form of secular life that human society has yet 
reached. It rested ultimately, though somewhat vaguely, 
on religious Duty. And it produced a sense of mutual 
obligation between master and man, employer and em- 



THE MODERN CITY. 239 

ployed, old and young, rich and poor, wise and ignorant. 
To restore the place of this sense of social obligation in 
Industry, the world has been seeking and experimenting 
now for these four centuries past. 



III. The Modern City. 

It is needless to describe the modern city : we all know 
what it is, some of us too well. The first great fact about 
the Modern City is that it is in a far lower stage of organic 
life. It is almost entirely bereft of any religious, patri- 
otic, or artistic character as a whole. There is in modern 
cities a great deal of active religious life, much public 
spirit, in certain parts a love of beauty, taste, and cultiva- 
tion of a special kind. But it is not embodied in the city; 
it is not associated with the city ; it does not radiate from 
the city. The Modern City is ever changing, loose in its 
organisation, casual in its form. It grows up, or extends 
suddenly, no man knows how, in a single generation — in 
America in a single decade. Its denizens come and go, 
pass on, changing every few years and even months. Few 
families have lived in the same city for three successive 
generations. An Athenian, Syracusan, Roman family had 
dwelt in their city for twenty generations. 

A typical industrial city of modern times has no founder, 
no traditional heroes, no patrons or saints, no emblem, no 
history, no definite circuit. In a century, it changes its 
population over and over again, and takes on two or three 
different forms. In ten or twenty years it evolves a vast 
new suburb, a mere wen of bricks or stone, with no god or 
demi-god for its founder, but a speculative builder, a syndi- 
cate or a railway. The speculative builder or the company 
want a quick return for their money. The new suburb is 
occupied by people who are so busy, and in such a hurry 



240 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

to get to work, that in taking a house, their sole inquiry is 
— how near is it to the station, or where the tram-car puts 
you down. 

The result is, that a Modern City is an amorphous 
amseba-like aggregate of buildings, wholly without defined 
limits, form, permanence, organisation, or beauty — often 
infinitely dreary, monstrous, grimy, noisy, and bewildering. 
In America and in parts of England, a big town springs 
up in twenty or thirty years out of a moor, or out of a vil- 
lage on a mill-stream. If you leave your native town — 
say to go to India, and return after five-and-twenty years, 
you will not find your way about it ; and a gasometer or a 
railway-siding will have occupied the site of the family 
mansion. A modern city is the embodiment of indefinite 
change, the unlimited pursuit of new investments and quick 
returns, and of everybody doing what he finds to pay best. 
The idea of Patriotism, Art, Culture, Social Organisation, 
Religion — as identified with the city, springing out of it, 
stimulated by it — is an idea beyond the conception of 
modern men. 

There are certainly cities in Europe where some rem- 
nant of the old civic patriotism and municipal life survives, 
as it does in Paris, Rome, Venice, Genoa, Florence, Ham- 
burg, and Bern. In the British islands, perhaps Edin- 
burgh may be said to have retained a sense of civic life, 
art, and history ; it is an organic and historic city — not 
too large, and of singular and striking natural features. 
York, Lincoln, Nottingham, Leicester, Oxford, are historic 
cities with the sacred fire still burning feebly in their 
ancient sanctuary. London, if we limit London to one- 
fortieth of its area and one-tenth of its inhabitants, has 
still the consciousness of the culture, glory, and life of a 
great city. But for the rest of its area and population, it 
is lost and buried under the monotonous pile of streets, 



THE MODERN CITY. 241 

over an area as large as a county — without history, cul- 
ture, or consciousness of any organic life as an effective 
city. 

The monstrous, oppressive, paralysing bulk of modern 
London is becoming one of the great diseases of English 
civilisation. It is a national calamity that one-sixth of the 
entire population of England are, as Londoners, cut off 
at once both from country life and from city life ; for those 
who dwell in the vast suburbs of London are cut off from 
city life in any true sense. A country covered with houses 
is not a City. Four or five millions of people herded 
together do not make a body of fellow-citizens. A mass of 
streets so endless that it is hardly possible on foot to get 
out of them into the open in a long day's tramp — streets 
so monotonous that, but for the names on the street cor- 
ner, they can hardly be distinguished one from the other — 
with suburbs so unorganised and mechanical that there is 
nothing to recall the dignity and power of a great city — 
with a population so movable and so unsociable that they 
are unknown to each other by sight or name, have no 
interest in each other's lives, cannot be induced to act in 
common, have no common sympathies, enjoyments, or 
pride, who are perpetually hurrying each his own way to 
catch his own train, omnibus, or tram-car, eager to do a 
good day's business on the cheapest terms, and then get 
to some distant home to a meal or to rest. That is not 
life, nor is it society. These huge barracks are not cities. 
Nor can an organic body of citizens be made out of four 
millions of human creatures individually grinding out a 
monotonous existence. 

The bulk, ugliness, flabbiness of modern London render 

city life, in the true and noble sense, impossible or very 

rudimentary. It would be unjust to pronounce Liverpool, 

Manchester, and Glasgow too big to make true cities — 

Q 



242 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

though they have hardly yet found how to deal with their 
huge extent. But Paris, with four times the area and the 
population of these, still has contrived to remain an organic 
and mighty city. But Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow 
(and the same is more or less true of Birmingham, New- 
castle, Leeds, and Bristol), have enlarged their boundaries 
so rapidly and so entirely under the dominant passion of 
turning over capital and increasing the output — that 
beauty, dignity, culture, and social life have been left to 
take care of themselves, and the life of the labouring 
masses (for the well-to-do protect themselves by living out- 
side and reducing their city life to ' works ' and an office) 
is monotonous to all and to many almost bereft of physical 
comfort and moral elevation. An Athenian or a Roman 
who might have risen from his long sleep in the Cera- 
meicus or from beside the Appian Way to find himself a 
denizen of one of our cotton or metal cities, with its sooty 
air and its polluted streams, its mesquin market-place, 
its dingy lanes, and monotonous factories, with belching 
chimneys and steam 'hooters,' and the endless hurrying to 
and fro of its melancholy ' hands,' would have fancied him- 
self in one of the regions of Hades. The unregulated 
extension of the factory system, of the steam and coal 
industry to modern cities, has proved as destructive of 
comfort and in some places and in some periods as danger- 
ous to health as anything due to the defensive necessities 
and the unclean ignorance of the Middle Ages. There 
have been cases where it caused a worse pollution of water 
and of air. And it certainly made life more dismal and 
far less available for art and nobility of soul. 

There is no occasion for pessimism : and none but a 
reactionist or a madman could think of going back to 
ancient times whether of Polytheism or Feudalism. There 
are sides of modern city life, after all, far grander than 



THE MODERN CITY. 243 

anything in the ancient or the mediaeval world, though 
they are not so directly the outcome of the organic city. 
Our civilisation has long been a national rather than a 
civic growth ; and we look more to the nation than we look 
to the city. In spite of steam, smoke, factories, and all 
the selfish recklessness that distorts our industrial exist- 
ence, many of our modern cities, by zealous sanitary 
science, and by the passion for warring on disease that so 
nobly marks our age, have attained a death-rate unpar- 
alleled in the history of cities, often reaching to half the 
death-rate common in mediaeval and Oriental cities. It 
must be remembered that London, considering its vast 
size and its special conditions, must be counted as standing 
at the head of the civilised and uncivilised world, for its 
systematic efforts and final success in reducing the death- 
rate. It is now the least noxious to life of all great cities 
of the world, with a mortality far below that of the other 
capitals of Europe, and vastly below that of St. Petersburg 
or Calcutta. That means that we save year by year some 
hundred thousand souls in London alone. 

Nor is this all. Our city schools, museums, libraries, 
parks, hospitals, clubs, our charitable, social, and educa- 
tional associations (though it must be said they are only in 
part the outcome of any city life or city organisation) sur- 
pass anything which the ancient or the mediaeval world could 
show. Such cities as Glasgow and Manchester have at 
last a water supply that may fairly compare with the Ro- 
man, and in many of our Midland towns the water supply 
is pure, if not abundant. It is obvious that the police, the 
paving, the lighting, and in a few cities the sewage system 
far surpasses anything ever known in history. Birmingham 
has done wonders with great difficulties and unpromising 
materials. And the gigantic and scientific organisation 
of municipal life in such capitals as Berlin and Paris has 



244 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

begun to impress even the conservative mind of the Lon- 
doner, and may yet find rivals in our own mighty metropo- 
lis. In towns like Birmingham, Nottingham, Leeds, 
Oxford, Bradford, and Huddersfield, the means of educa- 
tion and culture are high above the level of average Eng- 
lish civilisation. Some of our more moderate historic 
towns retain or have regained the old spirit of civic life 
that did so much in the Middle Ages. We will not de- 
spair. Tremendous has been the revolution caused by 
modern industry. We have lived through a moral earth- 
quake. But the energy and social sympathy which still 
beat in the heart of the English people will at last bring 
us to a nobler type. 

IV. The Ideal City. 

Turn to the city as it might be. To deal first with the 
primary physical condition of size. A city of four millions 
of inhabitants covering an area of more than one hundred 
square miles is an impossible city. It is a Wen, as Cob- 
bett called it, which prevents all the real uses of a city life. 
The concentrated smoke of a million chimneys, the collec- 
tive sewage of four millions of souls, the interminable area 
they cover, the unmanageableness of such a mass for all 
true social purposes, is an insuperable difficulty to a people 
who have not the genius for city life that marks Parisians. 
A city where one cannot walk of an evening into the open, 
wherein millions live and die without seeing the spring 
flowers and the June foliage and the autumn harvest, from 
year's end to year's end, is an incubus on civilisation. 
Paris, with its wonderful organisation and system of lodg- 
ing in vast and lofty blocks, is still, it is true, a city, 
though one far too big and already becoming unmanage- 
able. A population of a million would be extreme, even 



THE IDEAL CITY. 245 

for a capital. The best type of city would not exceed a 
quarter or a fifth of that number. The essential thing in 
a great city is the power and variety that arises from the 
association of a very large body of organised families living 
a common life and combining for great social ends. A quar- 
ter of a million or less gives that variety and that power. 
When the number is extended to a million or to two or four 
millions the result is monotony rather than variety and dis- 
organisation rather than association. The root element of 
city life is daily contact and common society, and the num- 
bers to whom daily contact is possible are determined by 
the physical conditions of the living man. No machinery 
or inventions can do more than facilitate physical contact 
in a moderate degree. But five millions can no more form 
a real city organism than they could win the battle of 
Salamis. 

It would be childish to expect that Acts of Parliament 
can limit the growth of cities. But the increasing enor- 
mity of London, and indeed of Paris, is becoming a national 
danger of the first rank to which legislation may properly 
be addressed in an indirect and tentative way. We have 
no place here to be discussing the laws which affect the 
tenure of land. But if we find that country folk are con- 
tinuously over generations flocking into cities, and that 
under all conditions and in spite of the discomforts and 
crowding of cities, it must be that country people do not 
find themselves happy in their country homes. The well- 
to-do and the well educated show no tendency to crowd 
into cities : but very much the reverse. Hence we have the 
singular phenomenon that whilst the rich townsmen are 
hurrying to pass their lives in the country, the poor coun- 
trymen are hurrying into the cities. It may well be that, 
however great the drawbacks and discomforts of modern 
cities, and however poor the social life they afford, the 



246 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

modern country village may offer even less entertainment 
and fewer opportunities of social life. If that is so, it is a 
thing that can be remedied indirectly by legislation, and 
mainly by a higher sense of social obligation on the part of 
all who live in the country. If great landowners had taken 
up the lead which in feudal times they possessed and had 
proved themselves lords of the manor in any but a pecuni- 
ary sense, the draining off of the country population into 
the towns could never have become the prominent fact of 
the nineteenth century. 

A city ought to provide for its citizens air, water, light 
— absolutely pure, unlimited in quantity and gratuitous to 
all. There is no good reason why water should be sold 
(at any rate in public places) more than air, or light, or 
highways. Air, light, highways, water, are the primary 
conditions of civilisation. It is the interest of all that 
every citizen should have as much of these as he wants. 
There is no better reason to compel an individual citizen 
to buy water for sanitary uses than to compel him sepa- 
rately to pay for a walk in Hyde Park or a passage across 
London Bridge.. In feudal times there were tolls upon 
everything. A high civilisation abolishes tolls and fur- 
nishes the necessaries of life to all equally. Now air, light, 
roads, and water stand on a different footing from food and 
clothes. Food and clothing are produced in separate 
pieces, are infinitely varied, and are adapted to an infinite 
variety of personal wants and tastes. A loaf of bread, a 
beef-steak, a jug of beer, are individually produced and 
individually consumed. They remain ear-marked, identi- 
fiable, transferable, and the subject of property, and of 
commerce. Air, light, water, passage (in their public and 
collective use), have not this character : and their public 
use should be free to all citizens. 

We need the Roman system of water supply. Abun- 



THE IDEAL CITY. 247 

dant and pure rivers from the mountains should be carried 
into the city, with fountains, baths, wash-houses free in 
every ward without stint. The Roman aqueducts are 
one of the few features of material civilisation which have 
never been revived by any later age. We are still suffer- 
ing under the mediaeval horror of washing. When we 
had again adequate aqueducts we might hope to see the 
rivers and brooks that pass through our cities bright and 
clear like a trout stream, and ' silver Thames ' cease to be 
a term of reproach. Every chimney would consume its 
own smoke ; every sewer would be wholesome, for all 
noxious gases would be pumped up into safe spaces ; all 
refuse would be straightway disinfected and consumed. 
To use a stream as a drain, to discharge refuse into any 
public place or course, to emit noisome odours or danger- 
ous gases into any public thing, to do or to suffer anything 
that could spread infection, would be high treason against 
humanity visited with the extreme rigour of the law. 

The whole conditions of our industrial life would be 
reorganised; till our factory and workshop habits would 
be as repulsive to our descendants as a mediaeval charnel- 
house is to us to-day. It is not merely in the matter of 
hours that we need reform, but in the physical and even 
moral conditions of work. A factory, or a workshop, 
wherein men, women, and children are employed day by 
day, would be regarded as an outrage on civilisation, if its 
physical conditions were not as free from anything that can 
endanger health as the drawing-room of a wealthy family. 
And it would be a sort of public scandal that it should 
remain as repulsive and depressing as the average cotton- 
mill of Lancashire. 

The entire treatment of sickness and of mortality would 
be reorganised. Every house, or block of houses, for the 
collective system of tenements must ultimately obtain in 



248 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

cities, would be arranged with due provision for the care 
of the sick and of the dead. Infirmaries, disinfectants, 
ambulances, mortuaries on a large scale, will have to be 
arranged, systematically and scientifically, both for public 
and for private use. Our houses and blocks will be pro- 
vided with appliances needful in sickness, accident, birth, 
convalescence, and death. Cremation will take the place 
of the ghastly system of interment — Cremation with 
facilities for the due disposal of the ashes. Cremation 
has made but little way yet in superseding the growing 
evils of interment, because it has not yet provided for the 
religio loci and the cherished continuity of the 'remains ' 
of the departed. Rightly understood, Cremation offers 
just the same opportunities for the local consecration of 
these remains as does burial — the same opportunities and 
far better. The ashes which are the residuum of crema- 
tion may be treated with the same religious reverence that 
we have been accustomed to show to the putrescent con- 
tents of our hideous coffins — the same reverence in far 
more beautiful and familiar ways. We have made the 
fatal mistake of assuming that the proper care of our dead 
ends with the furnace of the Crematorium. No more so 
than it ends with the undertaker's hearse. The pure 
ashes of the beloved dead must be reverently inclosed in 
urns or sarcophagi of any kind we choose : and these urns 
with the innocent ashes within may be placed in ceme- 
teries, if we prefer, or better still in columbaria and 
chapels in the beautiful Campo Santos that will arise in 
the precincts and public places of the city itself. 

The hospital system must be revised. Every hospital 
would be strictly isolated — placed in the purest air, 
incapable of spreading infection, and arranged for con- 
stant and radical disinfection. For many purposes, it 
would consist mainly of movable iron sheds in some 



THE IDEAL CITY. 249 

open ground, continually removed, constantly purified, 
and - the consumable parts burnt. Into these infirmaries 
the sick would be carried by railways, specially constructed 
on the ambulance system. A few accident or special 
wards might be retained in isolated buildings, in conven- 
ient spots in the city, for emergencies or definite cases. 
But all men of science know the inevitable evils of vast 
hospitals in the midst of crowded cities. The system con- 
tinues, not for the sake of the sick, but for the convenience 
of the staff, and for facilities of access generally. An 
abnormal death-rate in the hospital, and continual infec- 
tion around it, are still endured, in order that the medical 
attendants and their pupils may have their cases at hand, 
that the organisation of a complex system of carriage may 
be avoided, and partly no doubt that the world may have 
ever before their eyes, in some conspicuous site in the 
city, a pompous and costly edifice, which, on scientific 
grounds, should never be placed anywhere at all, and least 
of all on that central spot. To expose a family to infec- 
tion, to spread contagion in a district, by the treatment 
of the sick, or the dead, or by any kind of refuse, to pol- 
lute open water, on a public way or place, would be an act 
of ruffianism and sacrilege at once. Sickness from all 
forms of infection and contagion would be reduced to the 
minimum of inevitable accident. The death-rate of such 
a city would fall from 20 or 30 per thousand to 12 or 14 
per thousand. 

Next to pure air, water, sunlight, free ways, and pro- 
tection against blood-poisoning, human life needs exercise 
and recreation for body and limb. The city of the future 
will have its squares, gardens, parks, play-grounds, and 
gymnastic courts, free to all, and within reach of all. No 
child, boy, or girl will be forced to play in a gutter; no 
youths will be reduced to lounge about the street. The 



25O THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

play-ground will be open to all, and almost within a mile 
of the house, or it will be almost useless. There are two 
towns in England where that great institution, the Play- 
ground, is adequately developed : these are Oxford and 
Cambridge, where some think it is almost overdone ; and 
Leicester, Derby, and some Midland and Northern towns 
are not wholly unprovided. But the opportunities which 
have long been secured to a few rich students, and to 
some sportsmen elsewhere, will be open to all citizens in 
the city of the future, as they were at Athens, Sparta, 
Syracuse, or Rome. 

A city, worthy of such a name, should offer to all its 
citizens noble public buildings, and impressive monuments 
within the reach of all. The ancient rule was to live at 
home in simple lodgings, and in public to have ever in 
view beautiful and stately public buildings — 

' Privatus illis census erat brevis — 
Commune magnum.' 

We reverse all this. We put the extreme of luxury that 
we can command into our homes, and we starve our pub- 
lic places. In the ancient world, to present noble monu- 
ments continually to the eyes of the citizens, was regarded 
as one of the main uses of a City. With us, public monu- 
ments are too often suspected of being a corporation job, 
the means of getting some obscure artist a commission, 
or furnishing the Mayor with a knighthood, when the 
Prince or Princess 'inaugurates' the opening ceremony. 
'Inaugurate' once meant a solemn and auspicious relig- 
ious act. In Athens, Rome, Florence, Venice, Verona, 
Cologne, Rouen, or Winchester — that is in classical or in 
mediaeval ages — the possession of a noble city, crowded 
with splendid and historic monuments, was the cherished 
birthright of the citizen — a potent source of civilisation. 
As it was once — so it will be again ! 



THE IDEAL CITY. 



251 



The citizen of the future will live in a City, through 
which silver streams will flow, in which the air will be 
spotless of soot, when water will bubble forth in fountains 
and reservoirs at every corner, where gardens, promenades, 
open squares, flowers, green lawns, porticos, and noble 
monuments will abound ; the air and water as fresh as at 
Bern, with gardens, statues as plentiful as they are in 
Paris, and more beautiful in art. At Rome, the citizen 
was reminded at every turn of his country's history by 
some monument, shrine, bust, or statue. There is but one 
city of the modern world — the French capital, where any 
attempt is made to develop this noble instrument of city 
life. 

Museums, statues, galleries, colleges, schools, and pub- 
lic halls will no longer be concentrated in overgrown capi- 
tals ; they will be universal in every moderate town. No 
town would be worth living in, if it does not offer a free 
library, a good art-gallery, lecture and music halls, baths, 
and gymnasia — free to all and within reach of all. To 
use all these, we shall need a day of rest in the week, as 
well as a day of worship on Sunday. Every citizen will 
be free of all the resources needed to cultivate his body, 
his mind, his heart: — his enjoyment of life, health, skill, 
and grace, his sense of beauty, his desire for society, his 
thirst for knowledge. If he does not use these resources, 
the fault will be his. 

These things are not to be had by Acts of Parliament, 
nor by multiplying Inspectors, nor perhaps by any single 
machinery whatever. Ideals are realised slowly, by long 
efforts, after many failures and constant mistakes. To 
reach ideals we have to reach a higher social morality, an 
enlarged conception of human life, a more humane type 
of religious duty. 



CHAPTER IX. 

ROME REVISITED. 1 

He who revisits Rome to-day in these busy times of 
King Umberto, having known the Eternal City of the last 
generation in the torpid reign of Pio Nono, cannot stifle 
the poignant sense of having lost one of the most rare 
visions that this earth had ever to present. The Colos- 
seum, it is true, the Forum, the Vatican, and St. Peter's 
are there still ; the antiquarians make constant new 
discoveries — fresh sites, statues, palaces, tombs, and 
museums are year by year revealed to the eager tourist ; 
and many a cloister and chapel, once hermetically closed, 
is now a public show. But the light and poetry have gone 
out of Rome for ever. Vast historic convents are cold and 
silent as the grave, and the Papal city is like a mediaeval 
town under interdict. French boulevards are being driven 
through the embattled strongholds of Colonnas and Orsinis, 
and omnibus and tram-car roll through the Forum of. 
Trajan, and by the Golden House of Nero. The yellow 
Tiber now peacefully flows between granite quays, but the 
mouldering palaces and the festooned arches that Piranesi 
loved have been improved away. 

One who is neither codino, ultramontane, nor pessimist 
may still utter one groan of regret for the halo that once 
enveloped Rome. We may know that it was inevitable, 
that it was the price of a nation's life, and yet feel the 
sorrow which is due to the passing away of some majestic 

1 Fortnightly Review, May 1893, No. 317, vol. 53. 
252 



ROME REVISITED. 253 

thing that the world can never see again. It is now twenty 
years since the late Professor Freeman, then visiting Rome 
for the first time, wrote as his forecast that if Rome, as 
the capital of Italy, should grow and flourish, a great part 
of its unique charm would be lost, and the havoc to be 
wrought in its antiquities would be frightful. The havoc 
is wrought ; the charm is gone, in spite of startling dis- 
coveries and whole museums full of new antiquities. It 
had to be. 

In the space of some thirty years I have visited Rome 
four times, at long intervals, and each time I groan anew. 
I was Italianissimo in my hot youth, and I am assuredly, 
not Papalino in my maturer age. I rejoice with the new 
life of the Italian people ; I know that for the regenerated 
nation Rome is essential as its capital ; I know that a 
growing modern city must wear the aspect of modern 
civilisation. I repudiate the whining of sentimentalists 
over the conditions of modern progress ; and the advice 
which Napoleon's creatures gave to the Romans, 'to be 
content with the contemplation of their ruins,' has the true 
ring of an oppressor. We acknowledge all that, and are 
no obscurantists to shudder at a railroad with Ruskinian 
affectation. But yet, to those who loved the poetry of old 
Papal Rome, the prose of the modernised new Rome is a 
sad and instructive memory. 

When I first saw Rome, it was not connected by any 
railway with Northern Italy. We had to travel by the 
road, and I cannot forget the weird effect of that Roman 
Maremma, purple and crimson with an autumn sunset ; 
the buffaloes, and the wild cattlemen and pecorari in sheep- 
skins ; the old-world coaches and postilions ; the desolate 
plain broken by ruins and castles ; the mediaeval absurdi- 
ties of Papal officialism ; the suffumigations and the visas; 
the cumbrous pomposity of some Roman principi returning 



254 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

from villeggiatura — it was as though one had passed by- 
enchantment into the seventeenth century, with its pictur- 
esque barbarism, and one quite expected a guerilla band of 
horsemen to issue from the castle of Montalto. 

And then Rome itself, so perfectly familiar that it 
seemed like a mere returning to the old haunt of child- 
hood, with its fern-clad ruins standing in open spaces, 
gardens, or vineyards ; the huge solitudes within the walls; 
the cattle and the stalls beneath the trees on the Campo 
Vaccino, forty feet above the spot where now professors 
lecture to crowds in the recent excavations ; the grotesque 
parade of cardinals and monsignori ; the narrow, ill-lighted 
streets ; the swarm of monks, friars, and prelates of every 
order and race ; the air of mouldering abandonment in the 
ancient city, as of some corner of mediaeval Europe left 
forgotten and untouched by modern progress, with all the 
historic glamour, the pictorial squalor, the Turkish routine, 
all the magnificence of obsolete forms of civilisation which 
clung round the Vatican and were seen there only in 
Western Europe. 

It had to go, and it is gone ; and Rome, in twenty or 
thirty years, has become like any other European city big, 
noisy, vulgar, overgrown, Frenchified, and syndicate-ridden, 
hardly to be distinguished from Lyons or Turin, except 
that it has in the middle of its streets some enormous 
masses of ruin, many huge, empty convents, and some 
vast churches, apparently abandoned by the Church. But 
the ruins, which used to stand in a rural solitude like 
Stonehenge or Rievaulx, are now mere piles of stone in 
crowded streets, like the Palais des Thermes at Paris. 
The sacred sites of Forum and Roma Quadrata are now 
objects in a museum. The Cloaca are embedded in the 
new stone quay, and are become a mere ' exhibit/ like 
York House Water-Gate in our own embankment. The 



ROME REVISITED. 255 

wild foliage and the memorial altars have been torn out of 
the Colosseum, and the ^Elian Bridge is overshadowed by 
a new iron enormity. Rome, which, thirty years ago, was 
a vision of the past, is to-day a busy Italian town, with a 
dozen museums, striving to become a third-rate Paris. 

The mediaeval halo is gone, but the hard facts remain. 
For to the historian Rome must always be the central city 
of this earth — the spot towards which all earlier history 
of mankind must in the end converge — from which all 
modern history must issue. Rome is the true microcosm, 
wherein the vast panorama of human civilisation is re- 
flected as on a mirror. It is this diversity, continuity, and 
world-wide range of interest which place it apart above all 
other cities of men. This one is more lovely, that one is 
more complete ; another city is vaster, or another has some 
unique and special glory. But no other city of the world 
approaches Rome in the enormous span of its history, and 
in this character of being the centre, as the Greeks said 
the o/x(/>aXo?, if not of this planet, at least of Europe. 

From this point of view, it cannot be denied that the 
recent changes which have destroyed the poetry of Rome 
have greatly enlarged its antiquarian interest. What the 
poet and the painter have lost the historian has gained. 
Regarded as a museum of archaeology, the city is far richer 
to the student. And that not merely by multiplication of 
remains, statues, and carvings, similar to what we had, but 
by new discoveries which have modified our knowledge of 
the history of the city. The continually growing mass of 
pre-historic relics, the Etruscan tombs and foundations on 
the Aventine and the Esquiline, the early fortifications of 
the Palatine, the remains of regal Rome, the systematic 
exploration of the Forum and the Palatine, the house of 
the vestals, the contents of the Kircher Museum, and of 
the new Museum in the baths of Diocletian, the excavation 



256 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

of the Colosseum, and of the palace of Nero, the com- 
plete tracing of the Servian circumvallation, and all that 
has been done to reopen cemeteries and tombs — have 
given a new range and distinctness to the history of Rome 
as a whole. 

We must now extend that history backwards by cen- 
turies before the mythical age of Romulus and his tribes- 
men on the Palatine ; and we know that somewhere on the 
Seven Hills there once dwelt one of the most ancient pre- 
historic races of Europe. Even the speculative builder 
and the hated railroads have enriched the museums and 
opened unexpected treasures to the antiquarian. One is 
forced to confess that to historical research new fields have 
been opened, even whilst the unique vision of the Eternal 
City faded away as quickly as a winter sunset. The Caesars 
found Rome of brick, and left it of marble. The House of 
Savoy found it a majestic ruin ; they have made it an inex- 
haustible museum. 

Compare Rome with other famous cities, which far sur- 
pass it in mediaeval associations — with Florence, Venice, 
Rouen, Oxford, Prague. They present at most four or 
five centuries of the Middle Ages with vivid power and 
charm : but this is only one chapter in the history of Rome. 
Athens, Constantinople, Venice, are more beautiful. And 
if Constantinople surpasses Rome in the dramatic contrast 
of Asia and Europe, and the secular combat between the 
East and the West, Byzantium was but a late imitation of 
Rome, and the tremendous scenes which the Bosphorus has 
witnessed seem but episodes when compared with the long 
annals of the Tiber. Constantinople, indeed, was a Rome 
transported bodily to the East. Paris and London certainly 
surpass Rome in that they record a thousand years of the 
destiny of nations still growing, and that we can hear in 
their streets the surging of a mighty life to which that of 



ROME REVISITED. 2$7 

Rome is now a poor provincial copy. But the thousand 
years of Paris and of London are but a span in the count- 
less years of the Eternal City. All roads lead to Rome : 
all capitals aim at reviving the image and effect of the 
Imperial City : all history ends with Rome, or begins with 
Rome. 

There are three elements wherein the historical value of 
Rome surpasses that of any extant city : first, the enormous 
continuity of its history ; next, the diversity of that inter- 
est ; and lastly, the cosmopolitan range of its associations. 
These hill-crests beside the Tiber have been the home of 
a disciplined people (we must now believe) for some three 
thousand years, and it may well be much more ; and during 
the whole of that vast period there has been no absolute or 
prolonged break. Athens, Jerusalem, Antioch, Damascus, 
Alexandria, Syracuse, Marseilles, and York, whatever they 
may once have been, whatever they may have recently 
become, fell out of the vision of history for long centuries 
together, like some variable star out of heaven, and sank 
into insignificance and oblivion. To very many the city of 
David and of the Passion has absorbing interests, such as 
no other spot on earth can approach; just as to the scholar 
the scene from the Pnyx at Athens calls up a sum of 
memories of unique intensity and delight. But the four 
transcendent centuries, when Athens was the eye of Greece, 
the eye of the thinking world, were followed by a thou- 
sand years when Athens was an obscure village ; and if 
the ancient history of Jerusalem was longer than that of 
Athens, it has been followed by a still more overwhelming 
fall. 

All other famous cities of the ancient world have waned 

and fallen, in some cases, as with Athens, Alexandria, and 

Marseilles, to rise again out of a sleep of ages. Or if, like 

Paris and London, they are growing still, it is during some 

R 



258 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

four or five centuries only that they have been the foremost 
cities of the world. But for two thousand years Rome has 
enjoyed an unbroken pre-eminence, for five centuries as 
the temporal mistress of the civilised world, and for some 
fifteen centuries as the spiritual head of the Catholic world. 
This dominant place in human evolution, prolonged over 
such immense periods of time in unbroken continuity, 
makes Rome the spot on earth where the story of civili- 
sation can be locally centred and visibly recorded. 

This is the real power and the true lesson of Rome ; and 
in a dim way, it was felt by our ancestors who in the olden 
days made the ' grand tour ' to enrich their galleries and to 
confer with virtuosi, or who in a later age followed the foot- 
steps of Corinne, Goethe, and Byron. Something of the 
kind remained down to the time of Pio Nono. There was 
still a certain unity of effect in Rome ; and even the more 
frivolous tourists had some sense of that over-mastering 
human destiny which caused Byron to break forth — 

' O Rome, my country, city of the soul ! ' 

But all that has happened in the last twenty years has de- 
stroyed that visual impression. The sudden swelling forth 
of the city into a modern busy town three or four times 
larger than the old sleepy city of the popes, the suppression 
of the convents and the external ceremonial, and the sullen 
withdrawal of the Papacy, the deadly war between modern 
democracy and ultramontane ecclesiasticism, the flooding 
of the old city with the triumphs of the modern builder, 
and the Haussmannisation of the most romantic of Euro- 
pean cities — all this has made it an effort of the abstract 
mind to look on Rome as the historic capital ; and as to 
the 'city of the soul,' one might as easily imagine it at 
Lyons, Milan, or indeed Chicago. And thus, the recent 
modernisation of Rome has destroyed the sense of historical 



ROME REVISITED. 259 

continuity, that unique effect of Rome as ' mother of dead 
empires,' and all that Byron poured out with his passionate 
imagination and his scrambling rhymes. In the days of 
Byron, Goethe, and Shelley, as it had been in the days of 
Claude, of Piranesi, of Madame de Stael, and Gibbon, as it 
still was down to the days of Andersen, Hawthorne, and 
Browning, Rome was itself a poem : a sombre, majestic, 
most moving dirge — but an artistic whole — a poem. The 
Italian kingdom and modern progress have made it a 
capital up-to-date, with a most voluminous Dictionary of 
Antiquities. 

But the new edition of the Dictionary of Antiquities > as 
edited by the House of Savoy, from 1870 to 1893, is 
immensely enlarged and almost rewritten. The brain may 
still recover more than the eye has lost. But it has become 
a strain on the imagination in the last decade of this cen- 
tury to revive in the mind's eye that historic continuity of 
the Eternal City, which till past the middle of this century 
was vividly presented even to the uninstructed eye. And 
the melancholy result is this — that Rome to-day is par- 
celled out into heterogeneous and discordant sections, 
which of old were simply impressive contrasts in the same 
picture ; and they who visit Rome with some special 
interest find nothing to attract them to the rival interests 
and the antagonistic worlds. 

They who go to Rome for the same reasons that they 
go to Paris or Vienna, see little at Rome more than in 
any other European capital, unless it be a few masses of 
ruins, and some enormous palaces and churches. The 
scholar and the antiquarian buries himself in museums, 
libraries, or excavations ; and to-day it hardly strikes him 
at all that he is in the palpitating heart of Christendom, 
or that he is passing blindfold amidst some of the most 
poetic scenes in the world. Of old this pathos and charm 



26o THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

pierced even the dullest pedant's heart ; but now, with 
avenues, tram-cars, electric lighting, and miles of Ameri- 
can hotels, he does not notice in modern Rome the rare 
glimpses of mediaeval Rome. And the Catholic pilgrim 
is so hot with rage and foreboding that to ask him to 
acknowledge either beauty or interest outside the cause 
of the Vatican, is a heartless mockery of all that he holds 
highest. And thus Rome, which to our fathers had the 
soothing effect of a Mass by Palestrina or a glowing sun- 
set after storm, now fills us with the sense of deadly 
passions, coarse desecration of what man has long held 
sacred, the incongruous mixture of irreconcilable ideas 
and mutual scorn. Bruno and Mazzini jostle Loyola and 
the Bambino. Tramways and iron bridges override, basili- 
cas and temples. 

It is all the more needful then for those who love the 
great historic cities and their lessons to strive against 
the sectional aspects of Rome and to insist on its historic 
unity, in spite of the ravages of modern progress. Many, 
of course, will still go to Rome for its picnics or the court 
balls of Queen Margherita, to hunt the fox or to pick up 
a curio, to copy a manuscript or a Guido, to catch a glimpse 
of the Pope, or to crawl up the Scala Santa. But the 
truth remains that, for those who have eyes to see, the 
pre-eminence of Rome as a city consists in the combi- 
nation and succession of all its varied interests. And 
although the continuity of its history is now far less 
directly conspicuous, and although on the surface Rome 
has now been promoted (or degraded) to the level of any 
other European capital, the record of the past is becom- 
ing far richer and more legible for those who with patience 
continue to read it ; and it is still possible to forget ambi- 
tious municipalism and the pandemonium or the jerry- 
builder, even whilst accepting the mosaics and the bronzes 



ROME REVISITED. 26 1 

their workmen have turned up, and the walls of the kings 
which they have laid bare and pierced. 

The various interests all group themselves under three 
heads : the Rome of antiquity, the Rome of the Church, 
the Rome of poetry, romance, architecture, painting, sculpt- 
ure, music. Down to the middle of this century, these 
were blended unconsciously into a certain harmony ; and 
it was the mysterious unison of these separate chords 
which has inspired so much poetry and art from the age 
of the Farnesina down to that of Transformation. Since 
the middle of the century and the tremendous events of 
1849, ^ nas been an effort of the imagination to catch 
the harmony rather than discord. And in the last twenty 
years, since the entrance of the king of Italy, the effort 
has become year by year more difficult. But with patience 
it may still be done. And we may yet venture to plead for 
Rome that, shorn as she is of her old unique magic and 
power, she remains still the greatest historical school in 
the world, and has not even yet descended to the level 
of Nice or Hombourg. 

The visible record of antiquity is continuous for at least 
a thousand years — indeed between the Column of Phocas 
and the earliest tombs we may possibly count an interval 
far longer. For five centuries at least, down to the final 
completion of the Rome of the East, Rome of the West 
was the spot where the whole force of the ancient world 
was concentrated — its wealth, its art, its science, its mate- 
rial, intellectual, and moral power. This planet has never 
witnessed before or since such concentration on one spot 
of the earth as took place about the age of Trajan, and 
let us trust it will never witness it again. From the Clyde 
to the Euphrates, from the Caucasus to the Sahara, the 
earth was ransacked for all that was pleasant, beautiful, 
or useful, whether in the produce of nature or in the arts 



262 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

of man. And it was flung down together on the banks of 
the Tiber with a wild profusion and with a lavish magnifi- 
cence which has never been equalled, though sometimes 
imitated. 

To that dazzling world of power, beauty, luxury, and 
vice, there succeeded the Christian Church with its fifteen 
centuries of unbroken organic life. This — far the longest 
and most important movement in the history of mankind 
— yet forms but one element in the history of the Eternal 
City, and the one element which to most Protestant tour- 
ists is the least conspicuous, if not almost forgotten. But 
the succession of spiritual empire to the inheritance of 
temporal empire in Rome is perhaps of all phenomena in 
history the most fascinating and the most profound, with 
its subtle analogies and infinite contrasts, with its sublime 
profession of disdain and its irresistible instinct for adapta- 
tion, its savage spirit of destruction combined with an un- 
conscious genius of imitation. For the Church took the 
classical form for its model, and ended by setting it up as 
a revelation, even whilst engaged in cursing it in words 
and demolishing it in act. 

That New Birth of free life which we call Humanism, 
or the Revival, or Renascence, was soon drawn towards 
Rome, and indeed for a time had its inspiration from the 
Papal world itself. Though Rome was not its birthplace 
nor in any sense its natural home, yet Rome drew to her- 
self the Tuscan and Lombard genius as she had drawn 
the Attic and the Alexandrian genius to her before ; and 
thus Rome became at last the great theatre for the Renas- 
cence, the stage whence its most potent influence over 
Europe was manifested and shed abroad. Not that any 
Roman approached in genius the great Florentines or 
Venetians, or that Rome was at any time so noble a 
school of imagination as Florence or Venice, or even 



ROME REVISITED. 263 

Siena or Verona. But the vast resources collected in 
Rome, the fabulous power of her great ecclesiastics, and 
the central and European position she held, made Rome 
for some three centuries one of the main adopted cradles 
of the Renascence. And if we include all the work and 
influence of Bramante, Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, Bembo, 
Cellini, Palestrina, Guido, Bernini, the architecture, the 
painting, the sculpture, the mosaics, the engraving, the 
drama, the music, the scholarship, the poetry, Rome must 
be counted as the most influential centre of the Renascence. 

It was not effected by native Romans, nor was it the 
offspring of a local school. Much of its influence was 
meretricious, and much of it was essentially debasing. 
But it governed, by its evil as much as by its strength, 
the thought of Europe ; and if we take the whole range 
of art, thought, and culture, Rome became at last its 
most prolific, most active, and most varied centre. Rome 
was the destined resort of artists in all fields for some 
five hundred years, from Giotto to Mozart, and the magic 
of Rome as an artistic paradise has hardly yet passed 
away in Europe. Nay, if we consider the vast influence 
over all subsequent building and all subsequent paint- 
ing of St. Peter's Church and Raffaelle's designs, and of 
church ceremonial and music, of the classical mania and 
of romantic poetry, if we add such minor influences as 
those of Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Metastasio, Piranesi, 
Winckelmann, Niebuhr, Canova, and Thorvaldsen, we see 
at once how largely Rome has been the clearing-house for 
the popularisation of art in the last three centuries. 

Much of it was artificial, theatrical, and feeble. But 
historically its development is curiously full of interest, 
as its influence over the modern mind has been almost 
without a limit. Why do Catholic worshippers from 
Warsaw to Cadiz, in Santiago, in Mexico, or Manilla, 



264 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

admire churches with a rococo jumble of gilded domes 
and pirouetting saints? Because the great cinque-cento 
artists built up St. Peter's as we see it to-day ; and Jesuit 
demagogues developed that type into the gilt pot-pourri 
which attracts the ignorant Catholic in every corner of the 
planet. Florence was doubtless the birthplace and nur- 
sery of Renascent art. But directly that the Renascence 
was captured and transformed by Jesuitism, Rome became 
its official seat. And in the evolution of human art, there 
is no record more instructive than that still stamped on 
the churches and palaces of the Eternal City. 

The Rome of antiquity, the Rome of the Church, the 
Rome of modern art are indeed three separate worlds ; 
and it is their contrast, their juxtaposition, their curious 
blending of mutual hate and mutual reaction, which forms 
the most instructive page of all history. Each of the 
three worlds may be seen in a more intense form else- 
where. The valley of the Rhone and the shores of the 
Adriatic have still a greater mass of imperial remains than 
the city itself. The Apennine hill towns, and perhaps 
mediaeval Paris, have a truer record of the Church. And 
Florence is the true cradle of modern art. But in Rome 
all three are combined, and their continual reaction, one 
on the other, is matter for inexhaustible thought. 

Rome, as a city, is thus a visible embodiment, type, or 
summary of human history, and, in these days of special 
interests or tastes, the traveller at Rome too often forgets 
this world-wide range and complexity. To the scholar the 
vast world of Christian Rome is usually as utter a blank 
as to the Catholic pilgrim is the story of Republic and 
Empire. To the artist both are an ancient tale of little 
meaning, though the words are strong. He who loves 
' curios ' is blind too often to the sunsets on the Cam- 
pagna. And he who copies inscriptions is deaf to the 



ROME REVISITED. 265 

music of the people in the Piazza Navona, or the evening 
Angelus rung out from a hundred steeples. All nations, 
all professions, all creeds jostle each other in Rome, as 
they did in the age of Horace and Juvenal ; and they pass 
by on the other side with mutual contempt for each other's 
interests and pursuits. But to the historical mind all have 
their interest, almost an equal interest, and their combina- 
tion and contrasts form the most instructive lesson which 
Europe can present. 

We have had whole libraries about Rome pictorial, 
Rome ecclesiastical, Rome artistic, Rome antiquarian ; 
about classical, mediaeval, papal, cinque-cento, rococo, 
modern Rome. There is still room for a book about 
the city of Rome as a manual of history ; about the in- 
finite variety of the lessons graven on its stones and its 
soil ; about its contrasts, its contradictions, its immensity, 
its continuity; the exquisite pathos, the appalling waste, 
folly, cruelty, recorded in that roll of memories and sym- 
bols. Such a book would gather up the thoughts which, 
as he strolls about the Eternal City, throng on the mind 
of every student of human nature, and of any historian 
who is willing to read as one tale the history of man from 
the Stone Age down to Pope Leo xin. 

Of all places on earth, Rome is the city of contrasts and 
paradox. Nowhere else can we see memorials of such 
pomp alongside of such squalor. The insolence of wealth 
jostles disease, filth, and penury. Devoutness, which holds 
whole continents spell-bound, goes hand in hand with 
hypocrisy and corruption. What sublime piety, what ten- 
der charity, what ideal purity, what bigotry, what brutality, 
what grossness ! Over this convent garden pensive mys- 
ticism has thrown a halo of saintliness : it is overshadowed 
by a palace which has one black record of arrogance. 
There, some tomb breathes the very soul of spiritual art ; 



266 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

beside it stands another which is a typical monument of 
ostentation. Here is a fragment worthy of Praxiteles, 
buried under costly masses of rococo inanity. Works that 
testify to stupendous concentration of power stand in a 
chaos which testifies to nothing but savagery and ruin. 
The very demon of destruction seems to have run riot 
over the spot that the very genius of beauty has chosen 
for his home. 

The eternal lesson of Rome is the war which each 
phase of human civilisation, each type of art, of manners, 
of religion, has waged against its immediate predecessor : 
— the fury with which it sought to blot out its very record. 
When Rome became Greek in thought, art, and habits, it 
destroyed almost every vestige of the old Italian civilisa- 
tion which was the source of its own strength ; and recent 
excavations alone have unearthed the massive walls, the 
pottery, bronze and gold work of the ages before Rome 
was, and also of the ages of Servius, Camillus, and Cin- 
cinnatus. Imperial Rome pillaged Greece, Asia, Africa, 
and heaped up between the Quirinal and the Vatican 
priceless treasures of an art which it only understood well 
enough to covet and to rob. When the Gospel triumphed 
over Imperial Rome, it treated the palaces of the Caesars 
as dens of infamy, and their monuments as blasphemous 
idols and offences to God. When the Anti-Christian 
Revival was in all the heyday of its immoral rage after 
beauty, it treated the Catholicism of the Middle Ages as 
a barbarous superstition. Popes and cardinals destroyed 
more immortal works of beauty than the worst scourges of 
God ; and the most terrible Goths and Vandals that the 
stones of Rome ever knew were sceptical priests and 
learned virtuosi. Nay, in twenty years the reformers of 
the Italian kingdom have wrought greater havoc in the 
aspect of Papal Rome than, in the four centuries since 



ROME REVISITED. 267 

Julius 11., popes and cardinals ever wrought on Classical 
and Mediaeval Rome. 

At every turn we come on some new crime against 
humanity done by fanaticism or greed. Into Imperial 
Rome there was swept, as into the museum of the world, 
the marbles, the statues, the bronzes, the ivories, the 
paintings and carvings, the precious works of human 
genius for some six or seven centuries — everything of 
rarity and loveliness that could be found between Cadiz 
and the Black Sea. There were tens of thousands of 
statues in Greek marble, and as many in bronze ; there 
were marble columns, monoliths, friezes, reliefs, obelisks, 
colossi, fountains. Halls, porticos, temples, theatres, 
baths, were crowded with the spoils of the world, rich 
enough to furnish forth ten such cities as London, Paris, 
or New York. It is all gone. There are but a few 
fragments now that chance has spared. Twenty sieges, 
stormings, pillages, a hundred conflagrations, the barbarous 
greed of the invading hordes, the barbarous fanaticism of 
the first Christians, the incessant wars, revolutions, riots, 
and faction fights of the Middle Ages, the brutal greedi- 
ness of popes, cardinals, their nephews and their favourites 
— worst of all, perhaps, modern industrial iconoclasm — 
have swept away all but a few chance fragments. 

In the time of Pliny there must have been still extant 
thousands of works of the purest Greek art of the great 
age. There is now not one surviving intact in the whole 
world ; and there are but two — the Hermes of Olympia 
and the Aphrodite of Melos — of which even fragments 
remain in sufficient preservation to enable us to judge 
them. Every other work of the greatest age is either, 
like the Parthenon relics, a mere ruin, or is known to us 
only by a later imitation. Of the bronzes not a single 
complete specimen of the great age survives. And this 



268 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

loss is irreparable. Even if such genius of art were ever 
to return to this earth again, it is certain that the same 
passion for physical beauty, the same habit of displaying 
the form, can never again be universal with any civilised 
people. And thus by the wanton destructiveness of suc- 
cessive ages, one of the most original types of human 
genius has become extinct on this earth, even as the mas- 
todon or the dodo are extinct. 

But masterpieces of marble and bronze were dross in 
comparison with the masterpieces of the human soul, of 
intellect, purity, and love, that have been mangled on this 
same spot and in sight of these supreme works of genius. 
The Christian pilgrim from some Irish or American mon- 
astery, from Santiago in Chile, from Armenia or Warsaw 
— the Catholic missionary on his way to die in China, 
or Polynesia, or Uganda — prostrates himself in the dust 
where Paul was beheaded and Peter crucified, where Greg- 
ory and Augustine prayed, and in the Colosseum he sees 
nothing but a monstrous black ruin ; but he kneels in 
the arena where the blood of martyrs was poured forth 
like water, which has witnessed such heroic deaths, 
such revolting crimes. Each zealot — Catholic, Protestant, 
or sceptic — remembers only his own martyrs. Romans 
massacred Gaul and Goth ; Polytheists martyred Chris- 
tians ; Papal creatures tortured Republicans, Protestants, 
and Reformers ; emperors' men slew popes' men, and 
popes' men slew the emperors' men ; Colonnas and Orsinis, 
Borgias and Cencis, Borgheses and Barberinis have poured 
out blood upon blood, and piled up crime on crime, till 
every stone records some inhuman act, and witnesses also 
to courage and faith as memorable and quite as human. 

The fanaticism of these same priests and missionaries 
has its own reaction. As the Catholic pilgrim to-day pros- 
trates himself on the spot where for eighteen centuries 



ROME REVISITED. 269 

Christian pilgrims from all parts of the earth have pros- 
trated themselves, the followers of Garibaldi and Mazzini 
glare on them with hatred and contempt ; so that, but for 
soldiers and police, no priest in his robes would be safe in 
Rome. The death-struggle between Papacy and Free 
Thought was never more acute. Hundreds of churches 
are bare, deserted, without the semblance of a congre- 
gation. Of late years, one may visit famous churches, 
known throughout the Catholic world, and find one's self, 
for hours together, absolutely alone ; and sometimes we 
may notice how they serve as the resort of a pair of lovers, 
who choose the church as a place to meet undisturbed in 
perfect solitude. Vast monasteries, which for centuries 
have peopled Christendom with priests and teachers, are 
now empty, or converted to secular uses. The Pope is 
'the prisoner of the Vatican,' and the Papal world has 
withdrawn from public view. 

Nowhere else in the world are we brought so close face 
to face with the great battles of religion and politics, and 
with the destruction wrought by successive phases of 
human civilisation. This destruction is more visible in 
Rome, because fragments remain to witness to each phase ; 
but the destruction is not so great as elsewhere, where the 
very ruins have been destroyed. At Paris, Lyons, Lon- 
don, York, Cologne, and Milan, the Roman city has been 
all but obliterated, and the mediaeval city also, and the 
Renascence city after that ; so that, for the most part, in 
all these ancient centres of successive civilisations, we see 
little to-day but the monotony of modern convenience, and 
the triumphs of the speculative builder. But at Rome 
enough remains to remind us of the unbroken roll of some 
three thousand years. 

At Rome we see the wreckage. At Paris and London 
it has been covered fathoms deep by the rising tide. 



276 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

They are finding now the tombs, arms, ornaments, and 
structures of the primitive races who dwelt on the Seven 
Hills before history was. We may now see the walls 
which rose when the history of Rome began, the fortress 
of the early kings, and their vast subterranean works. 
We can still stand on the spot where Horatius defended 
the bridge, and where Virginius slew his daughter. We 
still see the tombs and temples, the treasure-house of the 
Republic. We see the might and glory of Rome when 
she was the mistress of the world and the centre of the 
world. We see the walls which long defied the barbarians 
of the North ; we see the tombs of the Christian martyrs, 
and trace the footsteps of the great Apostles ; we see the 
rise, the growth, the culmination and the death-struggles of 
the Catholic Papacy. We see the Middle Ages piled up 
on the ruins of the ancient world, and the modern world 
piled on the ruins of the mediaeval world. At Rome we 
can see in ruins, fragments, or, it may be, merely in cer- 
tain sites, spots, and subterranean vaults, that revolving 
picture of history, which elsewhere our modern life has 
blotted out from our view. 

Take the Pantheon — in some ways the central, the 
most ancient, the most historic building in the world. 
For more than 1900 years it has been a temple — first of 
the gods of the old world, and since of the Christian God. 
It is the only great extant building of which that can 
now be said. It is certainly the oldest building in continu- 
ous use on earth, for it was a temple of the pagan deities 
one hundred years before the preaching of the Gospel at 
Rome ; dedicated by the minister and son-in-law of Au- 
gustus in the first splendour of the Empire ; converted 
after six centuries into a Christian church and burial- 
place, when it was filled with the bones of the martyrs 
removed from the catacombs. The festival of All Saints 



ROME REVISITED. 2*J\ 

thereupon instituted is the one Christian festival which 
modern scepticism concurs in honouring. In the Revival, 
the Pantheon became the type of all the domed buildings 
of Europe — first as the parent of the dome of Florence, 
thence of the dome of St. Peter's, through St. Peter's of 
our own St. Paul's, and so the parent of all the spherical 
domes of the Old and the New World. As such a type, 
it was the especial study of the humanist artists of the 
Revival, and so perhaps it was chosen for the tomb of 
Raphael. There, amidst a company of painters, scholars, 
and artists, his sacred ashes lie in perfect preservation ; 
and but lately he has been joined in death by the first 
king of United Italy, who lies in a noble monument, round 
which Catholic and Liberals are still glaring at each other in 
hate. Plundered by Christian emperors, plundered by popes 
and cardinals, the Pantheon still remains, to my eyes, the 
most impressive, original, and most perfect building extant. 

Imagine the Pantheon in its glory, before it was stripped 
of its gold, its bronze, marbles, and statues by emperors 
and popes. Conceive that vast, solid dome, still the larg- 
est span in the world — nearly one half more than the 
diameter of St. Paul's — the first great dome ever raised by 
man, the grand invention of Romans, of which the Greeks 
in all their art never dreamed. The dome, with the round 
arch out of which it sprang, is the most fertile conception 
in the whole history of building. The Pantheon became 
the parent of all subsequent domes, and so of that of The 
Holy Wisdom at Constantinople, which was the parent of 
the Byzantine oblate domes of Europe and of Asia. 

We can recall to the mind's eye its roof of solid concrete, 
moulded and plated within, and covered with gilt bronze 
plates without ; with its statues, the enormous columns of 
rare marbles and granite, its upper story of porphyry and 
serpentine, lit only by one great circle thirty feet in diam- 



272 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

eter, through which the open sky by day and the stars by 
night look down on the marble pavement. To this won- 
derful building, the one relic of the ancient world in its 
entirety, the builders of all after ages turned. For five 
centuries the Roman world turned to it ; till out of it arose 
a new art in Constantinople. Then in the fifteenth cen- 
tury at the Revival the humanist artists turned again to 
this same great work; it gave rise first to the dome of 
Florence, and then one hundred and fifty years later, to the 
dome of St. Peter's ; from St. Peter's the dome spread over 
the world — the Pantheon and the Invalides at Paris, St. 
Paul's in London, the Capitol at Washington, the Isaac 
Church at St. Petersburg are mere imitations of St. Peter's. 
And thus from the Pantheon has sprung the architecture 
which from Chile to Chicago, from the British Islands to 
the Turkish Empire, from St. Petersburg to Sicily, is seen 
in a thousand varieties, and in ten thousand examples. 

But it is not the Pantheon, nor indeed any ancient tem- 
ple, which served as the original type for the Gothic 
churches of Europe down to the ascendency of the Petrine 
type at the end of the sixteenth century. Nothing in the 
history of architecture is better established than the evo- 
lution of the Gothic Cathedral out of the civil basilicas 
of the ancient world. The whole course of that evolu- 
tion can be traced step by step at Rome, in Santa Maria 
Maggiore, St. Paul's without the walls, St. John Lateran, 
St. Clement's, St. Agnes', St. Lawrence, and the older 
churches of the basilican type. Thus with the basilicas, 
extant, converted, or recently destroyed, as the matrix of 
the Gothic churches from the fifth to the fifteenth centu- 
ries, and the Pantheon as the matrix of the neo-classical 
churches from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, we 
feel ourselves at Rome in the head-waters from which we 
can trace the flow of all modern architecture. 



ROME REVISITED. 273 

If the Pantheon be historically the central building in 
Rome, it is by no means amongst the oldest monuments. 
Nor are the walls of Roma quadrata, nor the first structures 
of the Palatine. The Egyptian obelisks carry us back, to 
a time almost as remote from the Pantheon as the Pan- 
theon is from us. The oldest, perhaps, date from the 
Pharaohs who built the Pyramids, and they were made to 
adorn the temple of the Sun on the banks of the Nile, 
thence were brought by the first Caesars to adorn a circus, 
or to give majesty to a mausoleum, then thrown down and 
cast aside in Christian ages as monuments of heathendom 
and savage shows. Again they were restored in the clas- 
sical revival after a thousand years of neglect, and set up 
to witness to the pride of popes and adorn the capital of 
Christendom. 

What an epitome of human history in those vast mono- 
liths, the largest of which is thirty-six feet higher than 
Cleopatra's needle on the Thames, and is more than three 
times its weight ; for a thousand years witnessing the pro- 
cessions of Egyptian festivals, then for some centuries wit- 
nesses of the spectacles and luxury of the Imperial city, 
then for a thousand years cast down into the dust, but too 
vast to be destroyed, and then set up again, with the bless- 
ings of popes and the ceremonies of the Church, crowned 
with the symbol of the Cross, to witness to the grandeur 
of the successor of St. Peter. They have looked down — 
these eternal stones — on Moses and Aaron, on Pharaohs 
and Greeks and Persians, on Alexander and Julius, on 
Peter and Paul, on Charlemagne and Dante, on Michael 
Angelo and Raphael. These stones were venerable ob- 
jects before history began; they have been objects of 
wonder to the three great religions, three races, and 
three epochs of civilisation. 

One can forgive destructive municipalism much for at 
S 



2^4 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

last rescuing from ignoble uses the burial-places of the 
Caesars. There are no edifices in Rome more interesting 
to the historian than those vast mausolea — the grandest 
and most imposing tombs that exist — the mausoleum of 
Augustus, that of Hadrian, of Caecilia Metella, the Pyra- 
mid of Cestius. That of Augustus, for a hundred years 
the burial-place of the Caesars and their families, then a 
castle of the Colonnas, the scene of endless civil wars, 
afterwards a common theatre for open-air plays, is now at 
last recovered, to be preserved as a monument of antiquity. 
The yet vaster mausoleum of Hadrian, for another hundred 
years the burial-place of the later Caesars, a huge tower of 
240 feet in diameter, and rising to 160 feet in height; 
once a dazzling mass of statuary, marble, columns, bronze 
and gilding ; then a fortress that bore the brunt of count- 
less sieges, the citadel of the popes, their prison-house, 
their refuge, and their treasure-house, adorned with fres- 
coes by pupils of Raphael, and famous in the anecdotes of 
Cellini, with cells, halls, and chambers crowded with anec- 
dotes : at last a barrack of the Pope and then of the King 
of Italy. 

This too, as one of the buildings of antiquity which has 
been in use continuously since the Empire, witnesses at 
once to the grandeur of the Caesars, to the tempest-tossed 
history of Rome in her Decline and Fall, to the robber 
bands of the Middle Ages, to the infamies of the Papacy 
of the tenth century and of the sixteenth century. The 
history of Rome from Theodoric to Victor Emmanuel, the 
sieges, the wars of the popes, the whole story of their tem- 
poral power, seem to group round the Castle of the Angel 
who stayed the Pestilence at the prayers of St. Gregory. 
Within it was the porphyry sarcophagus which once held 
the dust of Hadrian. Strange is the story of that stately 
coffin. After a thousand years it was carried off to St. 



ROME REVISITED. 2*]$ 

Peter's by Innocent n. for his own body, and it was burnt 
in a conflagration two centuries later. The porphyry lid 
of it was used in the tenth century for the coffin of the 
Emperor Otho n. Seven centuries later his ashes were 
ejected by a pope, and it was converted into the baptismal 
font of St. Peter's, where it now rests. What an epitome 
of the history of Rome ! This precious marble of the East, 
made to cover the dust of the Roman master of the world 
in the grandest tomb of Europe, desecrated and cast aside 
by barbarous invaders, one half of it was used as his coffin 
by the Emperor the successor of Charlemagne, the other 
is adopted for his own coffin by the Pope, the friend and 
protege 'of St. Bernard. This half is destroyed by fire ; the 
other half is still the font in the central Church of Chris- 
tendom. The Empire of the Caesars, the Empire of 
Charlemagne, the mediaeval Papacy, the modern Papacy, 
all are recorded in that historic marble. 

In spite of disfigurement, the recent ' improvements ' 
have rather accentuated that peculiar quality of the monu- 
ments of Rome, that they thus witness to the successive 
revolutions in human destiny. The antiquarian who exca- 
vates in the valley of the Nile, the Seine, or the Missis- 
sippi, the geologist who explores in the strata of some 
estuary, comes upon layer after layer of successive ages, 
the remains of historic ages, then of pre-historic ages, of 
the bronze age, of the bone implements, of the flint im- 
plements, the neolithic, and the palaeolithic age, until he 
comes to the glacial epoch, and so forth. That is the 
character of the Roman remains. With us Stonehenge 
records the Druids and nothing else, the White Tower 
records the Norman Kings, the Abbey the Plantagenets, 
St. Paul's the Stuarts, and no more. But at Rome each 
monument bears visible marks of four, five, or six successive 
ages over some two thousand years or a yet longer span. 



276 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

St. Peter has displaced Trajan on his column, as St. 
Paul has superseded Antoninus. The Mamertine prison 
was first perhaps an Etruscan waterwork of the early 
kings, then the state prison of the Republic, the scene 
of the execution of Jugurtha, and the conspirators of Cat- 
iline, of Vercingetorix, and many another captive chief, of 
Sejanus ; then it was believed to be the prison of St. Paul 
and St. Peter, from whence their last epistles were written, 
and since then it has become for the Catholic world a cen- 
tre of pilgrimage, adoration, and miracle. So the churches 
round the Forum are partly formed of Roman temples and 
basilicas, one of them being the seat of the Senate. So 
the Colosseum was built by Titus after the capture of 
Jerusalem, largely by captive Jews ; for three centuries it 
continued the scene of the most amazing and wonderful 
spectacles the world ever saw ; then it was a fortress of 
the feudal barons, the refuge or the terror of popes, then 
the quarry from which cardinals and families of popes 
built their palaces, then a deserted ruin, then a factory, 
next a sacred place of pilgrimage, of preaching, and of 
reverential worship, and now again secularised into a mere 
antiquarian museum, from which Nature and God have 
been driven as with a pitchfork. So, too, out of one vast 
hall in the Baths of Diocletian, Michael Angelo con- 
structed for a pope a stately modern church. The col- 
umns, the marble floors, the sarcophagi, the fonts, and the 
pulpits in the older churches have each a long and varied 
history. A column of Grecian marble has been oddly 
inscribed, ' From the bed-chamber of the Caesars.' A 
sculptured coffin first held a Roman senator, was next 
converted to the use of a martyred saint, was then cast 
aside as a worthless bit of stone on a heap of rubbish, and 
at length appropriated by an aesthetic churchman for his 
own pompous monument. 



ROME REVISITED. 277 

There is one feature of Rome which even the ra°-e of 
'improvement' has spared as yet — the feature which of 
all others is the most suggestive to the historical mind — 
the ancient city walls : the whole series of walls, with 
their towers, gates, ramparts, and barbicans, with the 
twelve miles of circuit, the fragments of the early kings, 
the walls of Romulus and of Servius, the walls of Aurelian 
and of Belisarius and Theodoric, the walls of Pope Leo, of 
Pope Sixtus, of Urban, of Pio Nono. What a vast proces- 
sion of events has passed in the sixteen centuries since 
Aurelian made the circuit that we see ! As we stand on 
those ramparts in the Pincian or in the Medici garden, or 
beside the Lateran Terrace, or near the grave of Shelley, 
what visions we may still recall — what victorious armies 
from east and west, north and south, coming home in 
triumph under Diocletian and Constantine, Julian and 
Theodosius, with the eagles glancing in the sun, and the 
legionaries tramping on in serried ranks ; what hordes of 
northern and southern invaders, Vandals, Goths, Lom- 
bards, Franks, Normans, and Saracens, the ever victorious 
armies of Charles the Great, of the Othos, of the Norman 
Guiccard ; what battles ; what sackings and conflagrations ; 
or again, what long processions of pilgrims from all parts 
of the earth ; what bands of monks led by Francis, Domi- 
nic, Loyola, and Xavier ; what companies of men-at-arms 
led by Colonnas, Orsinis, Frangipanis, Contis, and Cre- 
scentii ; and then in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
turies what clash of arms, what pompous ceremonies, what 
historic meetings, down to the time of Napoleon and Gari- 
baldi, and Pio Nono and Victor Emmanuel, and the latest 
breach of all, through which the Italian kingdom entered 
and displaced the Pope. These walls and gates, them- 
selves of all ages, bear stamped on them the history of 
Europe during sixteen centuries. Few edifices of man's 



278 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

hand on this earth have a record so great, and of such cen- 
tral interest. 

Of the Catholic memorials of Rome, though the Church 
has almost disappeared from sight, nothing is destroyed 
and little is changed. To the Protestant tourist, with his 
Murray and his Baedeker, now that the public papal cere- 
monies have practically ceased, this Catholic world is for 
the most part a blank. He passes from the Caesars to 
Raphael and Michael Angelo, Bernini and Guido, from the 
Forum to St. Peter's according to his taste, without a 
thought of the vast world of history, of legend, of poetry, 
of art, of religion, that fills up the twelve centuries be- 
tween the days of Constantine and the days of Leo x. 
The British tourist is but one out of many. To the tens 
of thousands of Catholic pilgrims who visit Rome from all 
parts of the world, this city of St. Peter is all in all ; ruins 
and pictures to them are worldly trifles. To them Chris- 
tian Rome is everything, and heathen Rome and modern 
Rome are less than nothing. And to the impartial mind 
of history, this Christian Rome is a very solid third part 
— nay, perhaps, a real half of Rome — historic Rome in 
its entirety. 

But it is a thorny topic to the mere historian, is this 
Christian Rome ; for every corner of its story is encrusted 
with vague legend, unsupported guesses, usually passing 
into palpable imposture. Miracle, tradition, superstition, 
and fraud have got inextricably woven into the texture of 
each record. As the tourist mocks at the footprints of the 
Apostles in the Mamertine rock, at the miraculous Bam- 
bino of Ara Cceli ; so the learned antiquary shakes his 
head at the sacred image of St. Peter, and at the tomb and 
cell of St. Cecilia. But the scepticism of tourist and 
antiquarian are somewhat overdone. There is a legendary, 
perhaps a fraudulent, element in many of the lives and 



ROME REVISITED. 279 

martyrdoms, nay, in most of them. Strict historical criti- 
cism can accept no one in its entirety. But there is a 
vast substructure of fact, most difficult to disentangle, and 
impossible now to prove. For my part, I would as soon 
believe that nothing of the Golden House of Nero still 
exists under the Baths of Titus, that no fragment of Roma 
quadrata remains embedded in the palaces of the Cassars, 
as I would believe that the legends of St. Clement and St. 
Lawrence, of Cecilia and Agnes, of Martina and Bibiana, 
were mere poetic inventions with no basis of fact. It is 
for the historical mind a hopeless task to analyse this 
element of fact ; and where superstition has piled up 
fables, and scepticism retorts with wholesale ridicule, a 
lifetime would hardly suffice to separate truth and fiction. 

Let us, then, be content to grope in the labyrinthine 
passages and silent vaults of the catacombs, to view the 
mouldering bones in their narrow cribs, the lamps, and 
circlets, and fragments of pottery and metal, the rude and 
smoky frescoes, the inscriptions, the epitaphs, the emblems 
of the faith ; let us descend into the lower churches of 
St. Clement and St. Agnes and St. Lawrence, St. Cosmas, 
and St. Martina ; let us visit the baptistry and cloisters of 
the Lateran, even the Scala Santa and the crypt of St. 
Peter's ; let us ponder over S. Gregorio and its remains of 
the great Gregory, S. Sabina, with its record of Dominic 
and Aquinas ; let us meditate in the convent gardens of 
the Esquiline and the Aventine, and feel that we are truly 
in touch with scenes historically consecrated by some of 
the greatest souls who have ever dignified humanity, with 
spots hallowed as some of the turning points in human 
civilisation, and certainly consecrated by the tears and 
prayers of believers during eighteen centuries. We neither 
surrender our critical judgment nor give way to a ribald 
scepticism. What parts of this mighty and pathetic 



280 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

pageantry of Christian legend are real, and what parts are 
pious fiction or unholy fraud, we cannot tell. Let us for- 
bear- to probe further where the task is vain. But this we 
know : that in that enormous mass of legend, relic, cere- 
monial, tradition and art, there is a basis of profound 
reality, and a world of imagery, emotion, sacrifice, such as 
man's brain and heart have never surpassed. 

It is a melancholy reflection how often our critical and 
sceptical habits make us blind to the true historic signifi- 
cance of such a monument as St. Peter's. The tourist and 
the student of art decry its rococo saints and extravagant 
pomposity, the waste of power, the manifest hollowness of 
its peculiar relics. Put aside antiquarian and aesthetic 
criticism, and still a marvellous record remains. Grant 
that the Cathedra Petri, the miraculous bronze image and 
the bones of the Apostle, the column at which Christ was 
scourged, are all pious fictions, there remains still in the 
very site, in the tombs of the early Leos, of Matilda, the 
great countess, in the antique Madonnas, in the font, in 
the crypt and subterranean vaults, in the sacristy and the 
cemetery of Constantine, in the tomb of Junius Bassus, 
and in the Navicella of Giotto, above all, in the long 
annals of that venerated spot from the circus of Nero 
down to its final consecration by Urban viii., enough to 
fill the thirteen centuries between Constantine and the 
Borgheses. 

To visit Rome — which even in the last generation had 
on most minds a sobering effect, as a visit to a cemetery 
must have, however beautiful be the spot where the de- 
parted sleep — has grown to be of mournful interest to 
those who remember it of old. There is to them a new 
meaning in the peasant's song, 'Roma, Roma, non e piu 
com' era prima ! ' We can see no longer the Salvator 
Rosa ruins and rocks, the Piranesi colonnades and arches, 



ROME REVISITED. 28 1 

the quaint old Papal pageantry, and the pensive landscape 
from garden and terrace. Bits of it remain here and there 
amidst acres of building speculations and American cara- 
vanserais. But for the mere student of antiquity there is 
ample compensation. And it is perhaps the truth that the 
deepest interest of Rome still is not in its art, in its Vati- 
can galleries, Sistine frescoes, or dome of St. Peter's, not 
in its churches, cloisters, relics, and tombs, but in its 
record of the ancient world. Rome never was a centre of 
art even in the days of Raphael, she never was a centre of 
Christianity even in the twelfth and the thirteenth century, 
as she was a centre of civilisation in the ages of Julius, 
Augustus, Vespasian, and Trajan. 

We may still stand on the tower of the Capitol and 
survey that glorious panorama bounded by Tuscan, Sabine, 
and Alban hills, and dream what that scene was some 
seventeen or eighteen hundred years ago. The Forum 
below was one radiant avenue of temples, triumphal arches, 
triumphal columns, colossal statues, monuments, and votive 
shrines — the senate-house, the rostra, the sacred way on 
one side — the circular temple of Vesta, the temple of 
Castor, and the basilica of Julius on the other ; above, on 
the right, the temple of Jove, on the left that of Juno, and 
the towering palaces of the Palatine and the Circus Maxi- 
mus beyond the valley. Far as the eye can reach would 
be vast theatres, enormous baths, colossal sepulchres, 
obelisks, columns, fountains, equestrian statues in marble 
or in bronze. The' walls of these sumptuous edifices are 
all of dazzling brilliance in Oriental marbles, bright with 
mosaic and with frescoes, and their roofs are covered with 
plates of hammered gold. In the far distance, across ter- 
races and gardens shady with the dark foliage of cypress 
and stone pine, might be seen the aqueducts which bring 
from the mountains whole rivers into the city, to fill its 



282 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

thousand baths and its hundred fountains. And between 
the aqueducts and the porticoes, far as the eye can reach 
to the hills beyond, villas gleam in the sun with their ter- 
races, gardens, statues, and shrines, each a little city in 
itself. 

This earth has never seen before or since so prodigious 
an accumulation of all that is beautiful and rare. The 
quarries of the world had been emptied to find precious 
marbles. Forests of exquisite columns met the gaze, 
porphyry, purple and green, polished granite, streaked 
marbles, in the hues of a tropical bird, yellow, orange, 
rosy, and carnation, ten thousand statues, groups and 
colossi of dazzling Parian or of golden bronze, the work 
of Greek genius, of myriads of slaves, of unlimited wealth 
and absolute command. Power so colossal, centralisation 
so ruthless, luxury so frantic, the world had never seen, 
and we trust can never see again. 

Strangely enough this portentous accumulation of riches 
and splendour lay open to all comers. The one thing that 
could not be seen (till the Empire was nearing its close) 
was a wall, a fortress, a defence of any kind. Rome of 
the Caesars was as free from any military look as London 
to-day. It had neither wall nor citadel nor forts. It was 
guarded only by a few thousand soldiers and a few thou- 
sand police. For four centuries or so it flourished in all its 
glory. There followed some ten centuries of ruin, waste, 
desolation, and chaos, until its restoration began — a resto- 
ration sometimes that was a new and worse ruin. The 
broken fragments only can be seen to-day. Here and 
there a few mutilated columns, cornices, staircases, and 
pavements, the foundations of vast temples, theatres, 
and porticoes, the skeleton of a few buildings too vast to be 
destroyed, a few half-ruined arches, a number of broken 
statues in marble, and one complete in bronze, rescued 



ROME REVISITED. 283 

because it was wrongly supposed to be a Christian sov- 
ereign. All else is dust and endless tantalising dreams. 
But that dust draws men to it as no other dust ever can. 
And he who begins to dream longs to dream again and 
again. 



CHAPTER X. 

IMPRESSIONS OF ATHENS. 

On a recent visit to Athens, I was introduced to a beau- 
tiful and patriotic Athenian lady, the wife of an official of 
rank, who begged me to write about Athens on my return 
home (this, I may say, is an ordinary form of politeness in 
that capital). When I promised rather rashly that I would 
try to do something, she took my breath away by asking 
if I meant to write about ancient or modern Athens ? 
This question did seem to me one of startling naivete ; 
and I helplessly replied that, whatever I said, should be 
about Athens — one and indivisible. My daring paradox 
was rewarded with a gracious smile. 

My answer was, however, not at all so extravagant as at 
first sight might appear. It is true that of all cities of the 
world of any pretensions, Athens is the one of which the 
ancient history (and the ancient history of a very short 
period) is all absorbing. We all dream of having seen 
Athens, or dream of one day seeing Athens, for the sake 
of the overpowering memories of some two or three cen-' 
turies at most. When we are at Athens, our eyes and our 
thoughts are filled with the sublime and up-soaring rem- 
nants of that brief epoch in the great age of the Republic. 
From that epoch until our own lifetime, the history of 
Athens, except for a few trivial scuffles and isolated notices, 
has been a mere blank, almost as much as if it had been 
another Pompeii buried under the dust of a volcano and 
recently disinterred. 

284 



IMPRESSIONS OF ATHENS. 285 

But, within the last thirty or forty years, we may say, 
Athens has risen up out of its tomb : — not like Pompeii, 
dead, silent, deaf, and voiceless, but eagerly revivifying the 
city of Pericles after some 2300 years ; reproducing the 
language, the political habits, the names, the intellectual 
peculiarities, even the architecture and the tastes of the 
ancient city — rising up, like Lazarus, after all these cen- 
turies, talking and living, as if the death of twenty-three 
centuries had been a trance. This fact, however super- 
ficial and artificial it may be in many ways, however little 
the modern city can compare with the art and thought of 
the ancient city, is a striking fact psychological, social, and 
historical. And hence, there is a strong tendency to con- 
sider Athens as it is, even whilst studying what Athens 
was. At Rome, or at Alexandria, there is almost nothing 
but the stones and the sites, to remind one of the ancient 
people. At Athens, the first impression is a sort of serio- 
comic fancy revival of the old city. We stand in the 
Forum or the Piazza Navona at Rome without imagining 
that the cab-drivers or the fruit-sellers have anything in 
common with Coriolanus or Camillus. They do not speak 
the language, or use the names, or imitate the forms of the 
Republic. But as one walks along the 680s 'Ep/iov in full 
view of the Acropolis, or listens to Tricoupi addressing the 
&)/ao? 'AOrjvcuo? in the open air in a language which Thucy- 
dides could understand, and which he would have rejoiced 
to cast into stately epigrams, as we pass under the Doric 
colonnades, in dazzling Pentelic marble, of the Academy, 
and the Museum — it is difficult to be quite indifferent to 
the revival — as some say, the scenic revival — but, in any 
case, a most suggestive historical renascence. As Byron 
felt, as competent historians feel, it is impossible to be 
wholly blind to the living Athens of to-day. 

My own two visits to Greece were too short to allow any- 



286 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

thing that can be called research, and these pages will aim 
at nothing but the recalling a few first impressions. When 
one arrives in Greece, the first thing that strikes us is that 
we have left Europe behind. It is true that Greece is not 
in Asia or in Africa, and hardly in the East ; but in spite 
of the maps, it is only conventionally in Europe. Greece 
is something between Europe and the East, with a certain 
dash of the South. The climate, the continuous blaze of 
the sun, the long months of complete drought, the dusty 
plains and dry water-courses, the aloes, the date palms, the 
cotton, the indigo, the current-grape, the jackal, the cha- 
maeleon, and the small crocodile — even the camel which has 
been seen in use — are Eastern and Southern rather than 
European. When we land in Greece, we find ourselves in 
the middle of the week before last, that is to say, they still 
use the Calendar of the Eastern Church, and are twelve 
days behind us in Europe. And in a.d. 1900 this will have 
become thirteen days, for in the West we shall omit that 
leap-year and gain another day. In Greece they talk o: 
the post coming in from Europe, which it only does when 
a ship arrives, and they speak of European things, in the 
sense of foreign. In spite of the conventional statements 
of the geographers, Greece is not in Europe ; but a half- 
way house between Europe and Asia. 

Another important fact, which the geographers ignore, 
is this — that Greece is an island for any practical purpose 
— or rather an interminable string of islands scattered 
along the Eastern Mediterranean over a space of sea that 
may measure some 500 miles, both north and south, east 
and west. The maps may show Greece as a prolongation 
of the Balkan Peninsula ; but it would not be practicable 
for an ordinary traveller to reach Greece except by sea. 
Athens, though it is a capital city of Europe, cannot be 
reached by the continental railways. The train will carry 



: 



IMPRESSIONS OF ATHENS. 287 

us direct from Calais to the furthest extremities of the 
Spanish, Italian, Austrian, Russian, and even Turkish 
dominions in Europe. But railways do not reach in the 
Balkan Peninsula south of Salonica, in Turkey. The 
Romans and the Turks had roads into Greece proper ; but 
it is now unsafe, very fatiguing, and costly, to travel by 
land from Salonica to Athens, and nobody does so. Hence, 
practically, socially, politically, and economically speaking, 
Greece is an island, a vast cluster of islands placed in the 
iEgean Sea, very far East and very far South. Athens 
lies east of Poland and of Hungary. The whole of Greece 
lies south of Naples and Taranto ; and Crete lies south of 
the Algerian coast and of any point of Europe. 

We must go to Greece by sea : and the sea voyage is 
most instructive. There is a long, lonely, restless stretch 
of sea, some 400 miles broad between the coast of Sicily 
and sight of the mountains of Attica. When the vast pin- 
nacle of Aetna, with its trailing pennon of smoke, a pin- 
nacle which hour after hour seems to rise in the sky, at 
last fades out of sight in the west, a long reach of unbroken 
sea has to be ploughed. Long before we sight the moun- 
tains of Taygetus or the headlands of Taenarum or Malea, 
between which lies the vale of ' Hollow Lacedsemon,' one 
has come to realise that we have left Europe far behind 
and are entering on the land of the rising sun. The old 
; saw ran — ' When you have passed Cape Malea, make your 
I will and say farewell to your kindred.' That is no longer 
I necessary or even prudent. But by the time that we have 
1 rounded Cape Malea and are steering north-east instead of 
I south-east, it breaks upon us that we have left Europe some 
i distance behind us. 

Whatever geographers may pretend, there is not any 

j such country as Greece — and there never was. There 

is no definitely marked portion of Europe inhabited by a 



288 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

people politically and socially one, with national traditions 
and habits. There is not now, and there never has been in 
ancient or in modern times. If we take a list of the illus- 
trious Greeks of antiquity, we shall find that far the larger 
part of them belonged not to continental Greece proper, 
but to Greek communities spread out over the world from 
the coast of Spain to the banks of the Euphrates, from 
the Euxine to the coast of Africa. There is now a Greek 
language, a Greek church, a Greek nationality, possibly to 
some degree, but very doubtfully, a Greek race, spread over 
many countries, over a thousand islands, mingled with other 
races, languages, and countries ; subdivided, dispersed, and 
scattered over more than a thousand miles, though the 
population of the entire Greek kingdom is not half that 
of London. All good Greeks would be scandalised if Crete 
was not included in Greece — Crete where they say true 
Hellenes survive. And if Crete, why not Rhodes, why not 
Cyprus, why not Smyrna, Chios, Lesbos, and the other 
islands of the Archipelago ? Till Athens lately became 
populous, there were more Greeks in Constantinople than 
in Athens, and it is always said of a purer Hellenic descent. 
And no other Greek town except Athens and Piraeus con- 
tains as many Greeks as there are in Smyrna, or Alex- 
andria, perhaps in Trieste, or London. Where does Greece 
begin and end ? All genuine Greeks deny with indignation 
that Greece is limited by the present frontiers of the actual 
kingdom. What are its local limits ? Every true Hellene, 
and every Philhellene states them in a different way. A 
Greek orator addressing the people of Athens talks not of 
their country, but of Hellenismus or Panhellenism, that 
is, the common aspirations of the so-called Greek race. 
Greece may mean a nation ; it cannot mean a country. 

Until we see Greece we hardly realise that Greece is 
practically all mountains, tremendous, bare, precipitous 



IMPRESSIONS OF ATHENS. 289 

mountains, with hardly any real plains of any size except 
at extreme points. The islands are so numerous and so 
close to the mainland that they practically form part of 
it. They are mere tops of mountains rising out of the 
sea. And it is much easier to pass from one island to 
another, than from one point of the mainland to another 
a few miles off. In sailing across the yEgean Sea, from 
the time we sight Cape Tsenarum (Matapan) until we reach 
the Bosphorus, some 500 miles, we never lose sight of 
mountains towering out of the sea. From Taenarum we 
can see the mountains of Crete 100 miles off; and in 
passing up the Archipelago, we see on one side the islands 
and mainland of Asia Minor on the East, and the islands 
and mainland of European Greece on the West. Hence, 
the whole of Greece, mainland and islands together, looks 
not like a definite country such as Italy, Spain, France, or 
England, but a long chain of Alps or Andes, half sub- 
merged in the Eastern Mediterranean, and thrusting a 
thousand bare and jagged peaks to form islands in the sea. 
The mountains are themselves lofty; and since they 
are usually seen as if they rose straight up out of the sea, 
they look stupendous, even to eyes familiar with the Alps, 
the Pyrenees, and the Apennines. The principal moun- 
tains in Greece are more than twice the height of Snow- 
don. Olympus, the loftiest of all, is more than twice the 
height of Ben Nevis with Arthur's Seat at Edinburgh on 
the ^op of that. The mountains which gird Athens round 
like a crown (Mr. Symonds thinks they form what the poet 
calis 'the crown of purple') are loftier than Snowdon and 
Ben Nevis, and yet they are all within a day's walk of the 
city. Thus from every point of view, Greece is not so 
much a country as a vast mountain chain half submerged 
in the sea. And owing to the multiplicity and height of 
the mountains, the small area in which they are concen- 
T 



29O THE. CITY IN HISTORY. 

trated, the singular transparency of the air, and the degree 
to which the land is indented and intersected by sea, 
Greece appears to be strangely small, — even smaller than 
it really is. It is hardly anywhere more than two hun- 
dred miles deep, or one hundred miles broad. So that 
from almost any elevated point, the greater part of Greece 
can be seen at once. Attica, the Peloponnesus, the East- 
ern islands, the mountains of Bceotia, Argolis, Arcadia 
and Eubcea, are all to be seen together. Attica is hardly 
bigger than the Isle of Wight, and infinitely less open to 
cultivation and transit. And ancient Athens would easily 
stand in the area of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. 
When we see it, we realise how small Greece is, in one 
sense ; and yet how widely spread out over the Eastern 
Mediterranean. Continental Greece is merely one vast 
mountain mass, into whose lateral valleys and gorges the 
sea has forced a channel. And yet, in another sense, 
Greece with its interminable chain of rocky islets, from 
Corcyra to Crete, from Crete to the Propontis, seems to 
lead on in a continuous land for a thousand miles. The 
mainland is severed by nature into small segments, each 
hardly able by itself to feed a thousand families. All 
Attica can hardly grow as much food as a single great 
estate in England, France, or Russia. Eleusis, which 
Athens ultimately subdued and incorporated, is not so far 
from Athens as is Shepherd's Bush from Woolwich ; and 
these famous towns are separated from each other by a 
steep and difficult mountain pass, which a regiment could 
hold against an army corps. Megara, which was a thorn 
in the side of Athens at the time of her imperial glory, 
was not much further from her than is Gravesend from 
London. Corinth, the deadly enemy of Athens, could be 
seen from the Acropolis. ^Egina, which Themistocles so 
earnestly advised the Athenians to incorporate, looks as 



IMPRESSIONS OF ATHENS. 29I 

near to Athens as Harrow looks to Notting Hill ; and a 
single oarsman might row himself across the gulf in any 
open boat. 

The mighty statue in bronze of Athene Promachos, the 
famous work of Pheidias, which, with its pedestal, towered 
some sixty feet on the summit of the Acropolis, could be 
seen from the coast of Argolis or from any of the heights 
of Corinth, Megara, ^Egina, or Bceotia. Thence they could 
behold Athene keeping watch night and day over her be- 
loved city. One used to doubt if this famous image could 
escape the charge of obtrusive monstrosity which is the 
note of colossal statues. But when we stand on the spot, 
and remember how this resplendent figure of the Patron 
Goddess ever faced the enemies of Athens, as each sun- 
rise and sunset tipped with golden fire the point of her 
spear and the crest of her helm, we may conceive how 
this Palladium sank into the popular imagination. And 
we see fresh meaning in the tale how, eight hundred years 
after the date of its erection, Alaric and his Goths had 
been scared from their raid on the Acropolis by the vision 
of the Goddess keeping ward over her city in arms. 

As the traveller for the first time in his life sails up 
the Gulf of ^Egina, and his straining eyes at last behold 
Attica and Athens, the impression is always the same. 
How magnificent is the amphitheatre in the centre of 
which stands the Acropolis ; how majestic and upsoaring 
is the grandest of all ruins on its immortal steep; how 
incredibly near together are placed these mighty memo- 
rials and historic sites; how marvellously small is the 
stage on which these undying dramas were played ! How 
sublime is ancient Athens in its loneliness : how infini- 
tesimally small is the space it occupied on the earth ! 

The situation of Athens is far grander than that of 
Rome, or Florence, perhaps even that of Naples, and of 



292 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

any city in Europe except Constantinople, which is a wholly 
different thing. The nearness and the continuity of the 
mountain amphitheatre round Athens, the great height 
and grand form of the mountains, the splendid mass and 
elevation of the Acropolis in the centre, produce an im- 
pression more strange, simple, and imposing than any city 
of the West. From the distance at sea, what we behold 
is a vast ruin on a noble cliff. If we do not so much 
consider beauty and picturesque charm such as that of 
Naples, Palermo, Verona, and Venice, but mass, unity, and 
weight of stroke in the impression, we may well feel that 
in simple, and it may be almost painful, majesty, nothing 
in Western Europe can equal the first sight of Athens. 
And what a mere shelf of rock it looks, buttressed round 
by mountains on all sides but towards the sea ! Like the 
rock of Gibraltar, Athens stands an imposing mass tower- 
ing out of the sea, lonely, unapproachable by landward, 
and hardly habitable apart from the sea ; suggesting at 
first sight far off empire across the sea, useless and unin- 
telligible, except as the impregnable fastness of a sea-born 
race. 

Attica itself is a mere rocky shelf opening down to 
the sea, but with nothing around it or behind it landwards, 
except jagged mountain peaks, defiles, and citadels held 
by her enemies and rivals. As we stand on the Propylaea 
and survey the magnificent panorama of rock, promontory, 
crags, gorges, and mountain ranges one beyond the other, 
rising into the sky, 5000, 6000, even 8000 feet, we are look- 
ing on soil trodden by the fiercest enemies of Athens in 
the days of her greatest strength, by Boeotians, Argives, 
Corinthians, Achaeans, and Arcadians. An Athenian 
thus lived ever in full view of the home of his enemies, 
and could behold some of the most memorable scenes in 
his own history, and also the birthplace and the tombs of 



IMPRESSIONS OF ATHENS. 293 

some of his most famous chiefs. The history of Athens, 
its triumphs and its weakness, had for its cradle one single 
rocky amphitheatre. And yet, as Comte has finely put it, 
it was easier for her to conquer a wide empire on the seas, 
than it was to subdue a neighbouring state within a day's 
march of her citadel. She could plant her trophies, her 
colonies, and her subject cities all over the Mediterranean, 
from Sicily in the West, to the Propontis on the North, 
and to Crete and Rhodes in the East ; but she never 
could subdue many a petty republic, whose territory could 
be seen as the citizens climbed the great staircase to the 
shrine of Athene. 

Let every traveller hasten to reach the top of Mount 
Pentelicus. It is loftier than Snowdon ; but it is only 
some twelve miles from Athens, a morning walk for the 
average hill-climber. In the hollow which seems to lie 
beneath our feet, as we gaze on the wonderful scene from 
the summit, the Acropolis, with the Parthenon and Propy- 
laea portico, dominate the basin of Athens. It is easy to 
mark the Pnyx where Themistocles and Pericles, Alci- 
biades and Demosthenes addressed the people ; there is 
the agora where Socrates stood and questioned all who 
cared to answer ; there is Mars' Hill where Paul spoke to 
philosophers and idlers about the Unknown God. One 
can almost make out the olive grove which still seems to 
mark the site of Plato's Academy, and not far from it the 
knoll which marks Colonos, the birthplace of Sophocles, 
the scene of his exquisite drama of the exiled CEdipus. 
In the two hundred years that sever the age of Pisis- 
tratus from that of Demosthenes, what a harvest of genius 
in all forms of human power — in war, art, poetry, policy, 
philosophy — has been gathered from that little field, which 
from our mountain top looks like a few bare, barren, sun- 
baked acres ! What an outburst of human activity and 



294 THE C1TY IN HISTORY. 

invention in that dazzling light and purity of atmosphere, 
where, as their poet says, they passed their days ' in dainty 
delight, in most pellucid air,' or as our own poet has 
said — 

' Where, on the AZgean shore, a city stands 
Built nobly, pure the air and light the soil — ' 

The atmosphere of Athens still seems to be light rather 
than air : its soil seems to be not earth, but the dust of 
white marble. 

Still standing on Pentelicus, we may see a little further 
Piraeus and the three ports beside the blue gulf, from 
whence some thousand fleets of triremes have set sail for 
all parts of the Mediterranean. And just across the thin 
streak of blue rises the island of Salamis. The water 
beneath it is the scene of the most famous sea-fight in 
history : beyond, the hills look down on the birthplace of 
^Eschylus : in the distance rise up the crag of Acro- 
Corinth and the mountains of Argolis, Cithaeron, Helicon, 
Parnes, and Hymettus. To the west and south, half Greece 
can be outlined, or traced by its topmost peaks and dis- 
tant islands. If we turn northwards, beneath our feet, an 
hour or two on foot below us, lies a quiet, drowsy plain 
along the sea-coast, sheltered by the vast ranges of Eubcea. 
That quiet, drowsy plain is Marathon, where Greeks first 
met the Mede in arms in the great day of the Athenian 
glory. The tumulus still to be seen was always known as 
the sepulchre of the Athenian warriors. Along the reedy 
shore ^Eschylus and his brothers fought in the desperate 
embarcation of the Persians. And in the northern dis- 
tance we see the mountains which tower above Ther- 
mopylae. This union of magnificent scenery with so large 
a prospect over historic scenes, this vast panorama over 
the memorials of events commemorated in the greatest 



IMPRESSIONS OF ATHENS. 



295 



poetry and prose of the world, makes the view from Pen- 
telicus live in the memory with that other prospect from 
the campanile of the Capitol at Rome. 

The nearness of every one of these historic scenes, the 
infinitely petty stage which these immortal men of genius 
trod in life, the brief moment of human history into which 
they were crowded, takes away the breath. Here in a 
town of very moderate size and population, within the 
span of one human life, there lived and worked Miltiades, 
Themistocles, Pericles, Alcibiades, yEschylus, Sophocles, 
Euripides, Aristophanes, Pheidias, Thucydides, Socrates, 
Plato, some of the most brilliant generals, statesmen, poli- 
ticians known to universal history, the greatest tragic 
genius, the greatest comic genius, the supreme art genius 
recorded in the annals of mankind, the great master of 
philosophic history, two out of the three great chiefs of 
ancient philosophy. All of these were born and bred 
within walking distance of this unique spot, and all of 
them within little more than a hundred years. There is 
nothing like this in the whole history of mankind. Even 
in Florence, Giotto, Dante, Leonardo, Michael Angelo, 
and Galileo, were separated by nearly four centuries ; and 
in Judaea, from Samuel to Ezekiel, we may possibly count 
some six centuries. It is this sudden blazing up of 
supreme genius on this mere speck of rock for one short 
period — and then utter silence — which makes the undy- 
ing charm of this magic spot of earth. 

What a light this throws on ancient history ! As we 
stand on Pentelicus, with the Acropolis, Marathon, Sala- 
mis, Piraeus, and Eleusis at our feet, we behold bays, 
plains, and hills, the dwellers wherein were ever strangers 
and enemies of Athens. No Megarian, no Argive, no 
Corinthian, no Boeotian, ever could become a citizen or 
share in the political and religious privileges of Athene. 



296 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

Homer, Sappho, Pindar, Theocritus, Pythagoras, Aristotle, 
Archimedes, and Hipparchus were mere foreigners at 
Athens, aliens and sojourners amongst the lawful citizens. 
Let him cross that narrow streak of blue sea, and the 
Corinthian at Athens, or the Athenian at Corinth, was 
what the Parisian is at Berlin, or the Prussian in Paris. 
What would England be, if a Kent man were an alien in 
Essex, if, from the hill at Sydenham, the Londoner looked 
on a people with whom he could neither trade, nor wor- 
ship, nor intermarry, nor hold civil or military relations ? 
What, if from the dome of St. Paul's the Londoner looked 
down on the city wherein were born and passed their 
whole lives Alfred, Edward, Cromwell, Shakespeare, Mil- 
ton, Bacon, Newton, and Scott, Byron, Shelley, and 
Wordsworth ; if from Primrose Hill, he could look down 
on the fields of Azincourt and Blenheim, of Trafalgar and 
Waterloo. Now at Athens, the Athenian looked day by 
day on the home of his national heroes, on the scenes of 
his national glory, and the works of his greatest artists, 
and also on the frowning strongholds of his deadly enemies. 
It requires an effort to bring home to the mind the 
small scale of ancient Athens. It does not seem within 
the old walls to have exceeded a square mile, about the 
area of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, and one-hun- 
dredth part of London. Out of this space, the Acropolis, 
wholly devoted to public buildings, the Areopagus, the 
Pnyx, and the Agora must have occupied at least one-tenth. 
But a few hundred acres, or the area of one of the large 
London parks, remained for private houses. These were 
mainly of wood and plaster, principally used at night. Of 
mansions for private citizens, of a permanent kind there is 
no vestige nor any reference in classical times. The nor- 
mal population could hardly have exceeded 25,000 full citi- 
zens ; and we cannot believe that the city and the ports 



IMPRESSIONS OF ATHENS. 297 

together could ever have contained 200,000 souls, even 
counting slaves, strangers, women, and children. 

Their whole life was public : their main life was spent 
in the open air. Their homes were shelters at night, with 
harems for the women and children. The climate of 
Athens is such that nothing to be called winter cold occurs 
between the end of February and the middle of December, 
and rain seldom falls between May and the end of October. 
We must imagine the Athenians of the great age as a very 
small class of free and privileged men, personally known 
to each other, living on terms of absolute equality, passing 
their lives in public, mainly in the porticoes, colonnades, 
temples, and market-places, having little serious work ex- 
cept in time of war, with strong civic patriotism, and in- 
tense local superstitions, lounging about with a noble sense 
of superiority like the officers of the guard in some military 
capital. They were educated in certain things and in cer- 
I tain modes beyond the wildest dream of modern culture, 
with all hard work committed to slaves, all cares of the 
household to women : passionately keen about grace, 
beauty, wit, and intellect. Their culture consisted of 
poetry, mythology, music, gymnastics, arithmetic, the art 
of conversation, infinite subtlety in the use of their own 
li language, and abnormal sensitiveness to rhythm, grace of 
I expression, wit, and all forms of beauty. So they lived 
daintily, as their poet said, in a balmy flood of light, sur- 
rounded by temples, statues, porticoes, shrines, and paint- 
I ings, and at every corner of their city dominated by the 
I radiant majesty of the Acropolis and its divine Guardian. 

It is not easy to conceive the effect of a building of 
I Pentelic marble in that atmosphere until one has seen it 
|l on the spot. But when we behold a new marble colonnade 
, in that pellucid air, sparkling like the Silberhorn peak of 
" the Jungfrau in the early morning light, we instantly com- 



298 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

prehend the peculiarities of that style. A Doric pediment 
in London no more enables us to understand a temple at 
Athens than the bronze Achilles of Hyde Park recalls to 
us the Athene Promachos of Pheidias. The Vestry of the 
Church of St. Pancras in Euston Square is not more like 
the Erechtheum than the pediment of St. Martin's in the 
Fields is like the Parthenon. The British Museum, the 
only tolerable Greek building in London, looks somewhat 
as a Greek temple might look during the eruption of a 
volcano. Two thousand three hundred and twenty-five 
years have tinged the Parthenon and the Propylasa a deep 
orange or russet. But a new building of Pentelic marble 
in the sky of Athens stands out soft, white, and dazzling 
with light. In the modern edifices of new Athens, built 
from the same quarry, we see the pearly radiance of the 
marble, the need and the uses of colour, the repose and 
coolness of these spacious colonnades and that which has 
been the puzzle of antiquarians — the entire absence of 
window. We are quite unable to conceive buildings with- 
out windows : we cannot work windows into Greek designs. 
At Athens we see that a colonnade of Pentelic marble 
lights itself, and in the sweetest way. The marble is semi- 
transparent. It diffuses, reflects, and harmonises sunlight 
in so mysterious a manner that a marble hall is bathed in 
a subdued and delicious glow. 

If we revive in imagination the Acropolis as it stood in 
its perfection, we see with new force the undoubted historic 
truth, that the Athenians, in spite of their restlessness, 
audacity, and individuality, were intensely conservative in 
ideas, slavishly superstitious about spiritual evils, and as 
St. Paul told them on Mars' Hill, too much bound by obso- 
lete scruples. The condemnation to death of Socrates and 
of Aristotle, the extreme timidity of Aristotle's utterances, 
the panic about the Hermae, the mob-fury after the battle 



IMPRESSIONS OF ATHENS. 



299 



of Arginusae prove it historically. But it is equally patent 
in their art. It is obvious that a Doric temple was slowly 
developed out of a small shrine having beams and pillars 
of wood. The form was rigidly maintained when the 
material and the scale were changed ; and, when temples 
were built of a vast size, they were still ornamented and 
designed on the old methods, however inapplicable these 
had become. As we stand beneath the peristyle and pedi- 
ment of the Parthenon, we cannot fail to see that, in a 
building of those grand dimensions and towering position, 
the lovely frieze and even the majestic figures of the pedi- 
ment, must have been sacrificed, so far as they never could 
be properly seen. Pheidias could not have been blind to 
this cruel result of antique convention. But neither he 
nor Pericles would have dared to transgress the sacred 
canons in which art was bound. 

The superstitious bigotry of the Athenians appears in 

their history, their habits, their institutions, their language, 

and the uniformity of their architecture. Stand on the 

spot and recall the Acropolis in its glory, and you will feel 

that there must have been after all a profound monotony 

and rigidity in those eternal colonnades and unvarying 

architraves. The arch was unknown in the fine age ; the 

temples were all built on one or two uniform patterns ; it 

was left to Rome to develop all the uses of arch, tower, 

dome, the column supporting the arch, the successive 

j stories, the hemicycle, and groined roof — all the intricate 

! combinations which Rome suggested to modern architect- 

I ure. Greece remained the slave of its traditions and 

i| canons of art. It is true that it avoided the incongruities 

! and coarse realism of later Roman art. But it was left to 

Rome to make art progressive even in its corruption. 

Like the drama of Racine, Attic art remained perfect in 

its conventions. But its conventions were iron chains. 



300 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

Accepting its traditional conventions, we cannot doubt 
that the Acropolis must have displayed in its splendour 
the most imposing mass of buildings ever raised by man, 
With Pheidias we feel in presence of the supreme artist 
(he was far more than sculptor) — the one perfect master 
in the history of art, of whose faultless genius no single 
side was weaker or less noble than the rest. He remains 
alone of men (or if not alone then it may be with Homer, 
Shakespeare, Mozart) one whose unerring instinct trans- 
muted into beauty every form of the world around him. 

There is one aspect of Attic art, and one of its most 
impressive types, which can be properly seen only in 
Athens itself. This is the monuments of the dead : of 
which many stand in the ancient cemetery of Cerameicus, 
and many are collected in the National Museum. In 
their pensive and exquisite pathos, in their reserve, in 
their dignity and human affection, in their manly simplic- 
ity — in frank, pure, social, and humane acceptance of 
death in all its pathos and all its solemnity, these Athenian 
monuments may be taken as the highest type of funeral 
emblems that the world possesses. They present an as- 
pect of Death pensive, affectionate, social, peaceful, and 
beautiful. There is nothing of the ghastly and cruel sym- 
bolism of the Middle Ages, nothing of the stately and 
pompous mausoleums dear to Roman pride, nothing of the 
impersonal fatuity of our modern gravestones. The fam- 
ily group is gathered to take its last farewell of the depart- 
ing. He or she is not stretched on a bed or bier, not 
sleeping, not wasted by sickness, not ecstatically transfig- 
ured. They sit or recline in all their health and beauty, 
sweetly smiling, as a loved one who is about to take a dis- 
tant voyage. The family grouped around are thoughtful, 
serious, not sad, loving and tender, but not overcome with 
grief ; they too take a long farewell of the traveller about 



IMPRESSIONS OF ATHENS. 301 

to depart. At his feet lies a favourite dog, some bird or 
cherished pet, and sometimes in an obscure corner a little 
slave may be seen howling for his master. But only slaves 
are allowed to weep. Sometimes the young warrior is 
mounted on his steed, sometimes is seen charging in the 
midst of battle. But, for the most part, all is ideal beauty, 
peace, and love. 

There is here no vain pomp, no arrogance of wealth and 
power, heraldic emblems, swords, coronets, and robes of 
state. Neither is there the horror or the ecstasy, the im- 
possible angels, the grotesque demons, the skulls or the 
palm branches with which we moderns have been wont 
to bedizen our funeral monuments. It recalls to us our 
poet's In Memoriam — a work too of calm and ideal art — 
towards the latest phase of the poet's bereavement. It 
seems as if the sculptor spoke to us in the words of the 
late Laureate : — 

' No longer caring to embalm 

In dying songs a dead regret, 
But like a statue solid set, 
And moulded in colossal calm.' 

Impressions — first impressions of Athens throng on 
the mind so closely and so vividly, that they are not easily 
reduced to order. A visit to Athens is worth the study of 
a hundred books, whether classical or recent. Any man 
who has sailed round Greece from the Ionian Sea to the 
^Egean, and up the Gulf of Corinth, and thence to that of 
^Egina and Eleusis, at once perceives that Greece was des- 
tined by nature to be, not so much the country of a settled 
nation, as the mere pied-a-terrt of a wonderful race whose 
mission was to penetrate over the whole Mediterranean 
and its shores. These so-called Greek states, celebrated 
in the immortal pages of Thucydides, were but petty 
cock-pits wherein, like game birds, these historic republics 



302 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

crowed, strutted, and fought each other. Greek war, from 
the point of view of modern armies, was but the playing 
at soldiers like the people of Lilliput and Blefuscu. An 
army which could not defend such a country as Attica 
from invaders, or the army which having got beneath the 
Long-walls could not take Athens, can hardly be classed 
amongst soldiers at all. Scipio or Julius Caesar with one 
legion would have settled the Peloponnesian war in a few 
months. As we behold it from a near height, we see that 
Athens always was, and always must be, an artificial city, 
resting entirely on its control of the sea and territory 
beyond sea. There is nothing behind Athens to support 
a population, and there never can be anything. Indeed 
in continental Greece itself, with its interminable barren 
rocks, there is no room for anything but a few herds, and 
sundry patches of olives, vines, currants, fruits, and to- 
bacco. Continental Greece is in truth a mere mountain 
rising out of the sea, with a total population less than that 
of the city of Berlin. 

Greece was therefore destined to be a sea power only, 
and, in recounting its achievements on land, her histo- 
rians are liable to mislead us altogether. The Spartans 
no doubt remained for many centuries individually, like 
Soudanese, 'first-class fighting men.' But they knew 
nothing of scientific war, and seem throughout their his- 
tory to have been commanded by mere drill-sergeants. 
They were, as a Frenchman irreverently remarked of an- 
other brave army, 'lions led by asses.' Their stupidity, 
slowness, incapacity to develop the art of war, their slavish 
adherence to routine and tradition, prevented them for 
ever being really effective ; and, though they were a race 
of mere soldiers, they never became a really war-like race. 
The Athenians, however good at sea, were on land untrust- 
worthy, excitable, undisciplined crowds of civilians. They 



IMPRESSIONS OF ATHENS. 303 

had hours of heroism, as at Marathon ; but, after all, Mara- 
thon was rather a moral victory, won by genius, elan, and 
a sort of spasmodic patriotism which astonished the victors 
as much as the defeated. It was hardly a great battle 
fought out on a regular plan. And, after Marathon, the 
Athenians did nothing very great on land. Their cam- 
paigns were unworthy of notice, and their conduct in the 
field has that character of unsteadiness which belongs to 
citizen levies. The Macedonians under Alexander were 
trained and excellent troops, equal perhaps to anything in 
ancient war ; but the Macedonians were not Greeks. It 
is melancholy to think how largely the attention of acad- 
emies and schools is absorbed in these trumpery scuffles 
which have no scientific interest of their own, and which, 
from the historical point of view, could have no serious 
result. 

It is the wonderful literary and poetic genius of Greece 
which has given a halo to these petty manoeuvres. And 
to the same cause may be traced the singular phenomenon 
of the revival of Hellenism in the present century, by a 
people who, as a whole, have but a tincture of Hellenic 
blood. The process of reviving ancient Greece is still 
proceeding with immense rapidity, and in curious modes. 
Seventy years ago, Greek (or Romaic as it was called) was 
a tongue only spoken by certain classes in certain places ; 
and it was in no sense the language of Xenophon or even 
Plutarch. None but a few scholars were familiar with the 
term Hellenes, or with anything of Hellenic history or 
literature. The cultivated men of Greece have now placed 
the current Hellenic tongue much nearer to that of Plu- 
tarch than our English is like that of Chaucer ; and news- 
papers, written in a language which Herodotus could easily 
follow, are circulated as far as Trieste and Constantinople. 
After two thousand years, a language, which is practically 



304 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

the Greek of literature, is again paramount from Corfu to 
Crete, from Larissa to Cerigo, from the Ionian islands to 
the Sporades. The ancient names, the ancient architect- 
ure, the ancient taste for reading, are revived. The effect 
is that of an illusion. One's guide is Sophocles, and the 
cab-driver is Themistocles ; one drives along the 'OSo? 
f Ep/M)v, and at every street corner one sees a name familiar 
to us in Thucydides and Aristophanes, and many an absurd 
compound, such as iTrirocnhripohpoiJLos, or tramway. Of 
course much of all this is artificial, and irresistibly comic, 
like the solemn revival of Olympian Games. But there is 
enough below the surface to be counted as one of the most 
curious examples of the subjective filiation of ideas to be 
met with in modern times. And it is a truly pathetic 
illustration of the imperishable fascination exerted over 
all after ages, by the genius of ancient Hellas. 

The revival is the more interesting, since few competent 
observers believe in the survival of Hellenic blood. It is 
needless here to touch on the obstinate dispute as to how 
much of the blood of the Hellenes runs in the veins of 
the modern Greek people. In certain islands, in parts of 
Peloponnesus, in certain mountain districts, it may do so 
to a qualified extent. In some parts of the mainland, it is 
perhaps almost wholly extinct, and Attica is one of the 
districts where the immortal fluid is the thinnest of all. 
When we consider how greatly Athens, its ports, mines, 
and territories, was even in ancient times, peopled with 
alien blood ; how that, from Christian times until the 
present generation, the population of Athens had sunk to 
that of a village ; when we read Gibbon's scathing picture 
of what Athens was a hundred years ago, or even Byron's 
prose account of it eighty years ago ; when we learn that 
sixty years ago, when it became a capital, it had only 300 
houses, and a mixed population — it is physically certain 



IMPRESSIONS OF ATHENS. 305 

that the 130,000 inhabitants of Athens and the Piraeus 
must be mainly an immigrant people. 

The fact that the recrudescence of the old Attic salt, 
even in its peculiarities and foibles, must be due to some 
intellectual filiation of ideals and habits, and not at all 
to race inheritance, makes the sight of the re-Hellenisa- 
tion of Hellas the more interesting as a study. If we read 
Byron's melancholy picture of Athens and the Athenians, 
whilst we roam in the bright and ambitious city of King 
George to-day, we may note one of the most singular 
transformations that modern history can show us. Where 
the poet found only a few abject slaves, we may now see 
one of the most busy political towns in Europe. To see 
pure democracy, as described by Aristophanes, we should 
go, not to New York, Paris, or East London, but to 
Athens ; and there watch Demos in his native cradle, 
under the sky of Athene, and in full view of Propylaea and 
Pnyx, listening with passionate keenness to his favourite 
orator, who, in the language of Pericles or Cleon, is extoll- 
ing the future of the Hellenic idea. It may be that in its 
indigenous soil the art of ochlocratic Bunkum has devel- 
oped with unusual profusion ; and perhaps the Pan-Hellenic 
idea has given rise to nonsense even worse than that of 
the Pan-Britannic or Pan-Slavonic idea. But the habit of 
treating the aspirations of an ambitious young nation with 
supercilious patronage, and of ridiculing their really won- 
derful material progress, is not reasonable or even decent. 
The extravagances of Hellenic vanity are hardly greater 
than the extravagances of national vanity in many parts 
of the Old and New World. And the progress that has 
been made by Greece in sixty years, under great diffi- 
culties, and with very narrow resources, is a fact that 
cannot be denied. 

Greece is a, country more keenly proud and more fiercely 
u 



306 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

jealous of her memorials of the past than any people on 
the face of the earth. The remnants of the great age are 
all that she has to recall the history out of which her 
renewed existence as a nation is built. They are to 
Greece her Magna Charta, her Statute Book, her West- 
minster Abbey, her St. Stephen's in one. She is making 
sacrifices to recover, preserve, and display every fragment 
of ancient art. Her Museums and National Collections 
are quite as well kept as ours, and quite as adequate for 
their purpose. They fill a far larger part of the nation's 
interest and the business of the State than do ours. They 
are quite as safe as those of Berlin, Paris, or Rome, and 
are far less exposed to soot and damp than those of Lon- 
don. The only danger that could threaten them would 
be from the navy of some Western power. The time then 
has come, on grounds of international morality, to restore 
the sublime fragments which seventy years ago an English 
ambassador tore away from the Parthenon. English liter- 
ature contains an enduring protest against this Vandalism, 
which Lord Byron denounced as ' the last poor plunder of 
a bleeding land,' — 

' Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved, 
And once again thy hapless bosom gored, 
And snatch'd thy shrinking gods to northern climes abhorred.' 

The removal of these stones from Athens would be 
impossible in our age, and was only made possible by 
their happening to be within the power of an Oriental 
despot. Their acquisition can reflect nothing but dis- 
honour on our name : as Byron said, 'the honour of Eng- 
land is not advanced by plunder.' But the conditions of 
the case have changed : and the ' Elgin marbles ' stand on 
a footing wholly different from the other treasures that 
our Museums possess. These collective works of art, of 



IMPRESSIONS OF ATHENS. 307 

which our Museum has a part, still remain in situ where 
they were placed, and they form part of the very structure 
of the temple which still stands there as a majestic ruin. 
The Greek people have raised on the Acropolis itself a 
national museum, where every fragment of the ancient 
work that once adorned it, is religiously preserved. The 
collection is unique, incomparable, of inestimable value, 
and is constantly being increased. It derives its peculiar 
impressiveness from the fact that these priceless relics 
still remain on the sacred citadel of Athene, under the 
shadow of the mighty temple of which they formed part. 
The Parthenon gains a new charm by their presence ; 
whilst the statues gain a fresh power by being within its 
precinct. Pheidias, Ictinus, Pericles, acquire each a new 
dignity in our eyes, as we contemplate the ruin and its 
adornments on the ever-consecrated spot where such 
amazing genius laboured and thought. 

We go to our own Museum, and we are wont to plume 
ourselves on the diplomacy and taste of the eminent per- 
sonage who secured these treasures. We say they are 
now safe, carefully preserved, and accessible to every one. 
Perhaps it was wrong to steal them, but now that it is 
done, it cannot be mended. In the meantime the British 
public can study High Art at its leisure. But there is 
something above High Art, and that is national honour, 
and international morality. And when, in the enthusiasm 
of a first visit to the city of Plato, Sophocles, and Pheidias, 
we behold the empty pediments which, we have wrecked, 
and the blank spaces out of which our national representa- 
tive tore metopes and frieze, when we see the terra-cotta 
Caryatid, which is forced to do duty for her whom we have 
ravished from the temple of Erechtheus — it is not so easy 
to repeat the robber sophism : having plundered, it is best 
to keep the plunder. One day the conscience of England 



308 the city in history. 

will revive, and she will rejoice to restore the outraged 
emblems of Hellenic art to the glorious sky, where only 
they are at home, on that immortal rock, and beneath the 
shadow of the sublime temple, which a supreme genius 
made them to ennoble. And our eloquent discourses 
about Art will gain by being sweetened with honesty and 
good manners. 



CHAPTER XL 

CONSTANTINOPLE AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 1 

I. Byzantine History. 

Of all the cities of Europe the New Rome of the 
Bosphorus, in its power over the imagination of men, can 
yield the first place to none save to its own mother, the 
Old Rome of the Tiber. And of all cities of the world 
she stands foremost in beauty of situation, in the marvel 
of her geographical position, as the eternal link between 
the East and the West. We may almost add that she is 
foremost in the vast continuity and gorgeous multiplicity 
of her historic interests. For if Constantinople can pre- 
sent us with nothing that can vie in sublimity and pathos 
with the memories of Rome, Athens, Jerusalem, it has for 
the historic mind a peculiar fascination of its own, in the 
enormous persistence of imperial power concentrated under 
varied forms in one unique spot of our earthly globe. 

Byzantium, to use that which has been the ordinary 
name with all Greek writers from Herodotus down to 
Paspates in our own day, is one of the oldest cities of 
Europe: historically speaking, if we neglect mere pre- 
historic legend, little younger than Athens or Rome. 
Like them, Byzantium appears to have been founded on 
a pre-historic fort. Hardly any of the ancient towns of 
Italy and Southern Europe can show so authentic and 
venerable a record. There is no reason to doubt that 

1 Fortnightly Review, April, 1894, No. 328, vol. 55. 
309 



3IO THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

Byzantium has been a historic city for some 2550 years: 
during the whole of that period, with no real break in her 
life, it has been the scene of events recorded in the annals 
of mankind ; it has been fought for and held by men 
famous in world history, it has played a substantive part 
in the drama of civilisation. So singular a sequence of 
historic interest can hardly be claimed for any city in 
Europe, except for Rome herself. 

For nearly a thousand years before it became the capi- 
tal of an empire, Byzantium was a Greek city of much 
importance, the prize of contending nations, and with 
striking prescience even then chosen out by philosophic 
historians for its commanding position and immense capa- 
bilities. After the lapse of nearly a thousand years, By- 
zantium became Constantinople, the centre of the Roman 
Empire. Since then it has been the capital city of an 
empire for exactly 1564 years — and that in a manner and 
for a period such as no other imperial city has been in the 
annals of civilised man. There is no actual break ; although, 
for the dynasty of the Palaeologi, from the Latin Empire 
down to the capture by the Ottomans, the empire outside 
the capital had a shrunken and almost phantom dominion. 
But it is yet true, that for 1564 years Constantinople has 
ever been, and still is, the sole regular residence of Em- 
perors and Sultans, the sole and continuous centre of civil 
and military administration, the supreme court of law and 
justice, and the official centre of the imperial religion. 

During all this period, the life of the empire has been 
concentrated in that most wonderful peninsula, as its 
heart and its head. It has been concentrated for a far longer 
period, and in a more definite way, than even it was in 
the original Seven Hills ; for Rome herself was the local 
seat of empire for scarcely four centuries, and even for 
that in an intermittent form ; and vast as has been the con- 



CONSTANTINOPLE AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 311 

tinuity of the Roman Church for at least thirteen centuries, 
its life, and even its official government, have had many 
seats and continual movements. But from the days of 
Constantine, Constantinople has been, both in the tem- 
poral and spiritual domains, the centre, the home, the pal- 
ladium of the empire of the East. For fifteen centuries 
the Lord of Constantinople has never ceased to be the 
Lord of the contiguous East; and, whilst sea and rock 
hold in their accustomed places, the Lord of Constanti- 
nople must continue to be Lord of South-Eastern Europe 
and of North- Western Asia. 

This continuity and concentration of imperial rule in an 
imperial city have no parallel in the history of mankind. 
Rome was the local centre of empire for barely four cen- 
turies, and for sixteen centuries she has wholly lost that 
claim. The royal cities that once flourished in the valleys 
of the Ganges, the Euphrates, or the Nile, were all aban- 
doned after some centuries of splendour, and have long lost 
their imperial rank. Memphis, Babylon, Tyre, Carthage, 
Alexandria, Syracuse, Athens, had periods of glory, but no 
great continuity of empire. London and Paris have been 
great capitals for at most a few centuries ; and Madrid, 
Berlin, Vienna, and St. Petersburg are things of yesterday 
in the long roll of human civilisation. There is but one 
city of the world of which it can be said that, for fifteen 
centuries and a half, it has been the continuous seat of 
empire, under all the changes of race, institutions, customs, 
and religion. And this may be ultimately traced to its 
incomparable physical and geographical capabilities. 

Mere duration of imperial power and variety of histori- 
cal interest are indeed far different from true greatness or 
national dignity. But as an object of the historical imag- 
ination, the richness of the record, in the local annals of 
some world-famous spot, cannot fail to kindle our thoughts. 



312 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

History, alas ! is not the record of pure virtue and peace- 
ful happiness : it is the record of deeds big with fate 
to races of men, of passions, crimes, follies, heroisms, and 
martyrdoms in the mysterious labyrinth of human destiny. 
The stage whereon, over so vast a period of man's mem- 
ory, ten thousand of such tragedies have been enacted, 
holds with a spell the mind of every man who is in sym- 
pathy with human nature, and who loves to meditate on 
the problems of human progress. 

History and European opinion have been until lately 
most unjust to the Byzantine empire, whether in its 
Roman, its Greek, or in its Ottoman form. By a singular 
fatality its annals and its true place have been grossly 
misunderstood. Foreign scholars, German, French, Rus- 
sian, and Greek, have done much in recent years to repair 
this error ; and English historians, though late in the 
field, are beginning to atone for neglect in the past. 
Finlay worthily led the way, in spite of sympathies and 
antipathies which almost incapacitate an historian from 
fully grasping Byzantine history; Professor Freeman 
struck the true note in some of his most weighty and 
pregnant pieces, perhaps the most original and brilliant of 
his essays; and now Professor Bury, of Dublin, has un- 
dertaken the task of casting into a scientific and syste- 
matic history those wonderful narratives of which Gibbon 
gave us detached and superb sketches, albeit with limited 
resources and incomplete knowledge. Edwin Pears, in 
a fine monograph, has given us very much more than 
the history of the Fourth Crusade. 1 And the incessant 

1 History of Greece, from 146 B.C. to A.d. 1 864, by George Finlay, ed. by 
H. F. Tozer, 7 vols.; Historical Essays, by E. A. Freeman, third series, 
1879; The Later Roman Empire, from 395 a.d. to 800 A.D., by J. B. Bury, 
Trin. Coll. Dub., 2 vols., 1889; The Fall of Constantinople in the Fourth 
Crusade, by Edwin Pears, LL.D., 1885; The History of the Byzantine Em- 
pire, by C. Oman, 1893. 



CONSTANTINOPLE AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 3 13 

labours of foreign scholars are beginning to filter even 
into the ideas of the general reader. Russian and Greek 
monasteries have preserved unknown and precious chroni- 
cles ; and Armenian, Saracen, and Persian manuscripts 
have lately been added to our annals. The terrible Corpus 
of Byzantine histories becomes less heartbreaking in its 
dryness and its affectation, with all the light that modern 
scholarship has thrown upon that record of romantic and 
tremendous events, too often told by official annalists with 
pedantic dulness and cold-blooded commonplace. Krause, 
Hopf, Heyd, Gfrorer, in Germany ; Sabatier, Rambaud, 
Schlumberger, Drapeyron, Bayet, in France ; Byzantios, 
and Paspates, in Greece, have given a new life to this 
vast repertory of a thousand years of varying fortune. 1 

At the same time, the local archaeology of Constanti- 
nople has received a new impulse. The political and 
economic changes which resulted from the course of 
events, from the Crimean War of 1853 to the Treaty of 
San Stefano in 1878, have opened Constantinople much 
as Japan was opened thirty years ago. European scholars 
and resident Greeks have been enabled to study the re- 
mains ; the Sultan has formed a most interesting museum 
under Hamdi Bey, a Turkish archaeologist ; and Dr. Pas- 
pates, a Greek antiquarian, has attempted in the cuttings 
and works of the new railway, almost wholly to recon- 
struct Byzantine topography. The vague and somewhat 
traditional localisation repeated by Banduri, Ducange, 
Gyllius, Busbecq, and the rest, has now been corrected 
by scientific inspection of ruins and partial excavation. 
The ingenious labours of Labarte, Salzenberg, Schlum- 

1 Sabatier, Monnaies Byzantines, 1862; Rambaud, V Empire Grec au 
Xme. Siecle, 1870; Drapeyron, E Empereur Heraclius, 1869; Schlumberger, 
Un Empereur Byzantin, 1890; Krause, Die Byzantiner des Mittelalters^ 
1869; Gfrorer, Byzantinische Geschichten, 1872-1877. 



314 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

berger, Bayet, Mordtmann, Riant, and others, 1 have been 
tested by some new excavations on the spot. No one 
could well deal with Byzantine antiquities without exam- 
ining the works of the late Dr. Paspates, especially of 
the Byzantine Palaces, which is now accessible to the 
English reader in the new translation of Mr. Metcalfe 

(i 893)- 

We have all been unjust to this Byzantine empire ; and 

its restoration to its true place in the story of human 
civilisation is beyond doubt the great lacuna of our cur- 
rent histories. What they tell us is mainly the story of 
its last four hundred years — when the Eastern empire 
was dying under the mortal blows inflicted on it as it 
stood between the fanaticism of the East and the jeal- 
ousy of the West. Of the seven centuries from Theo- 
dosius to the Crusades we hear little save Palace intrigues, 
though these years were the true years of glory in Byzan- 
tine history. This was the period when she handed down, 
and handed down alone, the ancient world to the modern ; 
when Constantinople was the greatest and most civilised 
city in Europe, the last refuge of law, arts, and learn- 
ing, the precursor of the Crusades in defending Christian 
civilisation by four centuries. Before the Crusades were 
undertaken by Europe, the Eastern empire was falling 
into corruption and decay. But down to the middle of 
the eleventh century, more or less continuously from the 
opening of the seventh, the history of the Eastern Romans 
may honourably compare with the history of Western Eu- 

1 Banduri, Imperium Orientate, 1711, 2 vols, fol.; Ducange, Constanti- 
nopolis Christiana ; Gyllius, De Topogr. Constantin. ; Busbecq, Letters, tr. 
by Forster and Daniel, 2 vols., 1881; Salzenberg, Alt-Christliche Baudenk- 
male, 1854, fol.; Labarte, Le Palais Imperial, de Constantinople, 4to, 1 861; 
Paspates, BvfavTLval MeXercu, 1 87 7; Bvfavriva 'Av&KTopa, 1 885; UoXiopicta 
/ecu dXQxris, 1 890; Professor van Millingen, in Murray's Handbook, new ed., 
1893; Byzantios, KuvaravT ivoviroXis, 1851-59, 3 vols. 



CONSTANTINOPLE AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 3 1 5 

rope, whilst in certain essential elements of civilisation, 
they stood not merely first in Europe, but practically 
alone. If Chosroes, or Muaviah, or Haroun, or Crumn, 
had succeeded in blotting out the empire of the Bos- 
phorus, it is difficult to imagine from whence we should 
have been able to recover either Roman law, or Hellenic 
art, or ancient poetry and learning, or the complex art of 
organised government, or the traditions and manufactures 
of cultured civilisation. At any rate, the whole history 
of mankind would have taken a different course. 

Neither under Roman, Greek, or Ottoman has the 
empire been, except at intervals, the abyss of corrup- 
tion, servility, and vice that Western prejudice has too 
long imagined. Horrors, follies, meanness, and pedantry 
abound ; but there is still a record rich in heroism, intel- 
lectual energy, courage, skill, and perseverance, which are 
as memorable as any in the world. Neither the intellect, 
nor the art, nor the religion are those of Western Europe ; 
nor have we there the story of a great people or a purify- 
ing Church, of a profound philosophy, or a progressive 
civilisation. Constantinople is, and always has been, as 
much Eastern as Western — yet with much that is neither 
of the East nor of the West — but special to itself. It 
is a type of Conservatism, of persistency and constancy 
unparalleled, amidst change, decay, and defeat. This 
miraculous longevity and recuperative power seem to go 
counter to all the lessons of Western Europe ; or in the 
West they are to be matched only by the recuperative 
power of the Catholic Church. The city and the Church, 
which date from Constantine, have both in these fifteen 
centuries shown a strange power of recovery from mortal 
maladies and hopeless difficulties. But the recovery of 
temporal dominion is always more rare than the revival 
of spiritual ideas. And in recuperative energy and tenac- 



316 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

ity of life, the empire of the Bosphorus, from Constantine 
to Abdul Hamid, is one long paradox. 

The continuity of empire in Constantinople suffered, it 
is true, a tremendous breach in dynasty, in race, and in 
religion, by the conquest of the Turks ; and, if it were a 
Christian, and Roman, or Latin, or Greek empire for 1123 
years, it has been a Moslem and Ottoman empire for 441 
years. To many historians these 441 years have been a 
period of Babylonish captivity for the chosen people. But 
those who are not especially Philhellene or Philorthodox, 
in any absolute sense, will view this great problem without 
race or sectarian animosities. Before the impartial judg- 
ment-seat of history the lesson of the past lies in the un- 
folding of genius in government and in war, in organising 
nations, and in moulding their destinies ; and where these 
great capacities exist, there is no room to indulge the prej- 
udices of a partisan. The two centuries of Stamboul 
which follow the conquest of Mohammed the Second, in 
1453, are greatly superior in interest and in teaching to 
the two centuries of Byzantine empire which precede it, 
and the miserable tale of the Latin usurpation. Nor has 
the whole- Ottoman rule of four centuries and a half been 
less brilliant, less rich in great intellects and great charac- 
ters, than the Byzantine empire from the time of the Cru- 
sades till its fall — perhaps even not more oppressive to 
its subjects, nor more antagonistic to moral and social 
progress. The marvellous city that Constantine created in 
330 a.d. has been ever since that day the effective seat of 
such government as the Eastern regions around it could 
maintain, of such civilisation as they could evolve, and of 
such religious union as they were able to receive. That 
empire, that type of society, seem preparing to-day for an 
ultimate withdrawal into Asia. But with such a record of 
persistence and revival, such tenacity of hold on a sacred 



CONSTANTINOPLE AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 3 1 7 

and imperial centre, few can forecast the issue with confi- 
dence. And that future is assuredly amongst the most 
fascinating enigmas which can engage the meditations of 
thinking men. 

It is an acute remark of the late Professor Freeman that 
the history of the empire is the history of the capital. The 
imperial, religious, legal, and commercial energy of the 
Eastern empire has always centred in Constantinople, by 
whomsoever held, in a way that can hardly be paralleled in 
European history. The Italian successors of Julius and 
Augustus for the most part spent their lives and carried on 
their government very largely, and at last almost wholly, 
away from Rome. Neither had the Western Emperors, 
nor the chiefs of the Holy Roman Empire, any permanent 
and continuous seat. The history of England and that of 
France are associated with many historic towns and many 
royal residences far from London and from Paris. Nor do 
the histories of Spain, Italy, or Germany, offer us any con- 
stant capital or any single centre of government, religion, 
law, commerce, and art. But of the nearly one hundred 
sovereigns of the Eastern empire, and of the twenty-eight 
Caliphs who have succeeded them in Byzantium, during 
that long epoch of 1564 years, from the day of its founda- 
tion, Constantinople has been the uniform residence of the 
sovereign, except when on actual campaign in time of war 
or on some imperial progress ; and in peace and in war 
under all dynasties, races, and creeds, it has never ceased 
to be the seat of official government, the supreme tribunal, 
and the metropolis of the religious system. 

From the age of Theodosius down to the opening of the 
Crusades — a period of seven centuries — whilst Rome 
itself and every ancient city in Europe was stormed, 
sacked, burnt, more or less abandoned, and almost blotted 
out by a succession of invaders, Constantinople remained 



318 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

untouched, impregnable, never decayed, never abandoned 
— always the most populous, the most wealthy, the most 
cultivated, the most artistic city in Europe — always the 
seat of a great empire, the refuge of those who sought 
peace and protection for their culture or their wealth, a 
busy centre of a vast commerce, the one home of ancient 
art, the one school of ancient law and learning left unde- 
spoiled and undeserted. From the eighth century to the 
thirteenth a succession of travellers have described its size, 
wealth, and magnificence. 1 In the middle of the twelfth 
century, the Jew Benjamin of Tudela, coming from Spain 
to Palestine, declares that 'these riches and buildings are 
equalled nowhere in the world ' ; ' that merchants resort 
thither from all parts of the world.' From about the 
eleventh century the downfall of the city began. It was 
ruined by the political jealousy of the Western empire, by 
the religious hostility of the Roman Church, and by the 
commercial rivalry of the Italian republics. Placed be- 
tween these irreconcilable enemies on the west, the inces- 
sant attacks of the Slavonic races on the north, and the 
aspiring fanaticism of Musulman races from the east and 
the south, the Byzantine empire slowly bled to death, and 
its capital became, for some three centuries, little more 
than a besieged fortress — filled with a helpless population 
and vast treasures and relics it could no longer protect. 

But whether the empire was in glory or in decay, into 
whatever race it passed, and whatever was the official 
creed, Constantinople never failed to attract to itself what- 
ever of genius and ambition the Eastern empire contained, 
nor did it ever cease, nor has it ceased, to be a great mart 

1 Early Travels in Palestine, ed. T. Wright, 1868 ; Krause, Die Byzanti- 
ner des Mittelallers, 1869; Heyd, Levantehandel, 1879; French ed. 1885; 
Riant, Exuvice sacrce Constant., 1877; Hopf, Chroniques Greco-Romanes 
inedites, 1 873. 



CONSTANTINOPLE AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 319 

of commerce, and clearing-house of all that the East and 
the West desired to exchange. It is still to the Greek 
priest, as it is to the Musulman imam, what Rome is to the 
Catholic. And to the Greek from Alexandria to New York 
it is still what Rome is to the Italian, and what Paris is to 
the Frenchman. In a sense, it is almost still the tradi- 
tional metropolis of the Orthodox Greek, of the Armenian, 
and almost of the Levantine Jew, as well as of the Moslem. 
Its history is the history of the Balkan peninsula, for its 
twenty famous sieges have been the turning-points in the 
rise and fall of the empire. The inner history of the 
thrones of the East has been uniformly transacted within 
those walls and upon the buried stones and fragments 
whereon we may still stand to-day and ponder on the 
vicissitudes of fifteen centuries and a half. 



II. Topographical Conditions. 

A large part of this strange radiation of Eastern history 
from the new Eternal City is unquestionably due to its 
unique local conditions. From Herodotus and Polybius 
down to Gibbon and Freeman, historians, ancient and 
modern, have expatiated on the unrivalled situation of 
Byzantium on the Bosphorus. There is no other so apt to 
become the seat of a great city on the habitable globe. 
Standing on the extreme easternmost point of the Balkan 
peninsula, it is within easy voyage of the entire coast-line 
of Asia Minor on its northern, western, and southern faces. 
As an early traveller pointed out, Constantinople ' is a city 
which Nature herself has designed to be the mistress of 
the world. It stands in Europe, looks upon Asia, and is 
within reach by sea of Egypt and the Levant on the south 
- — and of the Black Sea and its European and Asiatic 



320 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

shores on the north.' 1 Something of the kind might be 
said for such cities as Corinth, or Thessalonica, Smyrna, 
or Athens ; but the extraordinary feature of Byzantium, 
which confers on it so peculiar a power of defence and 
attack is this — that whilst having ample and secure road- 
steads and ports all round it, it has both on the north and 
the south, a long, narrow, but navigable sea channel, of 
such a kind that, in ancient or in modern warfare, it can be 
made impregnable against any invading fleet. 

Constantinople was thus protected by two marine gates 
which could be absolutely closed to any hostile ship, 
whether coming from the Black Sea or from the yEgean, 
but which can be instantly opened to its own or any 
friendly ship coming or going over the whole area of the 
Euxine or the Mediterranean. Whilst thus impregnably 
defended by sea, she could bar invasion by land by her 
vast rampart running from sea to sea, and not more than 
four miles in length. And at a distance of some thirty 
miles further west, a second wall, twenty feet wide and 
about forty miles long, shut off from north and west the 
main peninsula and ran from the Propontis to the Euxine. 
Constantinople in ancient times thus held what, with an 
adequate sea and land force, was the strongest defensive 
position in Europe, if not in the world. For by sea she could 
bar all approach from east, north, or south ; whilst on the 
west, the only landward approach, she was protected by a 
double rampart, placed upon a double peninsula, to say 
nothing of the natural bulwark of the Balkan mountains. 

To this incomparable position of security we must add 
that, whilst one side of the city faces an inland sea of 
wonderful beauty, which is rather a lake than a sea, an- 
other side of the city looks across the Bosphorus to Asia ; 
on the third side of the city is her own secure port of the 

1 Busbecq's Letters, translated by Forster and Daniel, 1881, vol. i. p. 123. 



CONSTANTINOPLE AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 32 1 

Golden Horn, about four miles long and more than half a 
mile wide. Here a thousand ships can ride in safety, and 
the channel is so deep that in places the biggest vessels can 
lie beside the quays. The country round is diversified with 
hills, valleys, and tableland, broken by bays and gulfs, and 
crowned with distant mountains. The Propontis and its 
shores teem with fish, fruit, vines, woods, and marbles, 
whilst in the far horizon the snowy folds of the Bithynian 
Olympus float as a dim but radiant vision in the distance. 
The extension of modern artillery has reduced and almost 
destroyed the defensive capacities of the city on the land- 
ward. But from the time of Xerxes until the present cen- 
tury, its power of defence was almost perfect so long as 
Byzantium could command the sea. She possessed nearly 
all the advantages of an island ; but of an island placed 
in a sheltered inland sea, an island from which rich dis- 
tricts both of Asia and Europe could be instantly reached 
in open boats, or by a few hours' sail in any kind of ship. 
A city, having magnificent harbours and roadsteads and 
abundant waterways in every direction, had all the peculiar 
features which have gone to create the power of Syracuse, 
Alexandria, Venice, Amsterdam, London, or New York. 
But Byzantium had this additional security — that, with 
all the facilities of an island, she could close her marine 
gates against any hostile fleet and forbid their approach 
within sight. Tyre, Carthage, Athens, Syracuse, Alexan- 
dria — we may say all famous seaports throughout the 
Mediterranean (except Venice, which lay safe in her 
lagoons), were exposed to a hostile fleet ; and all of them 
have been more than once invested by in\aders from the 
sea. But so long as Byzantium had forces enough at sea 
to close the gate of the Bosphorus and also that of the 
Hellespont, she was unassailable by any hostile fleet. 
And so long as she had forces enough on land to man 
x 



322 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

the long wall across the great peninsula, and also to de- 
fend her great inner fortifications across the smaller penin- 
sula, she was impregnable to any invading army. 

It would be unwise in a civilian to express any opinion 
of his own on the very important problem of the degree 
in which modern appliances of war have deprived Constan- 
tinople of her peculiar powers of defence. We are told 
that, so far as the closing of the Bosphorus and the Helles- 
pont extend, the resources of the artillerist and the sub- 
marine engineer have greatly increased their defensive 
capacity. Constantinople is, of course, no longer safe 
from an enemy posted on the heights, either above Pera, 
Scutari, or Eyub; and obviously her ancient walls and for- 
tification are useless. But with first-class forts to protect 
both Scutari and Pera, and also the heights to the west of 
the city — which together might require some four com- 
plete corps d ' armees — and with a first-class fleet in the 
Marmora, Constantinople would, even to-day, be far stronger 
for defence than any existing capital in Europe, perhaps 
stronger than any great city in the world. 

The peculiar position of Byzantium was alike fitted for 
offence or for defence. It was essentially a maritime posi- 
tion, the full resources of which could only be used by a 
power strong at sea. If it issued northwards, through its 
gate on the Bosphorus, it could send a fleet to any point 
of the Black Sea — a vast expanse of 172,000 square miles, 
having one of the greatest drainage areas in the world. 
Thus, in a few days, armies and munitions could be carried 
to the mouths either of the Danube, the Dnieper, or the 
Don, to the shores of the Crimea, or else eastward to the 
foot of the Caucasus, or to any point on the north coast 
of Asia Minor. If it issued south through the Propontis 
and the Hellespont, a few days would carry its armies to 
the teeming shores of Bithynia, or to the rich coasts and 



CONSTANTINOPLE AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 323 

islands of the ./Egean Sea, or to Greece, or to any point on 
the western or the southern coast of Asia Minor. And a 
few days more would bring its fleets to the coast of Syria, 
or of Egypt, or to Italy, Spain, Africa, and the Western 
Mediterranean. Thus, the largest army could be safely 
transported in a few days, so as to descend at will upon 
the vast plains of Southern Russia, or into the heart of 
Central Asia, within a short march of the head waters of 
the Euphrates — or they might descend southwards to the 
gates of Syria, near Issus, or else to the mouths of the Nile, 
or to the islands and bays of Greece or Italy. 

And these wide alternatives* in objective point could be 
kept for ultimate decision unknown to an enemy up to the 
last moment. When the great Heraclius, in 622, opened 
his memorable war with Chosroes, which ended in the ruin 
of the Persian dynasty, no man in either host knew till the 
hour of his sailing whether the Byzantine hero intended 
to descend upon Armenia by the Euxine, or upon Syria by 
the Gulf of Issus. And until they issued from the Helles- 
pont into the ^Egean, the Emperor's army and fleet were 
absolutely protected not only from molestation, but even 
from observation. To a power which commanded the sea 
and had ample supplies of troopships, Constantinople com- 
bined the maximum power of defence with the maximum 
range of attack. And this extraordinary combination she 
will retain in the future in competent hands. 

That wonderfully rapid and mobile force, which an emi- 
nent American expert has named the ' Sea Power,' the 
power discovered by Cromwell and Blake, of which Eng- 
land is still the great example and mistress, was placed by 
the founders of Byzantium in that spot of earth which, at 
any rate in its anciently-peopled districts, combined the 
greatest resources. Byzantium, from the days of the Per- 
sian and the Peloponnesian wars, had always been a prize 



$24 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

to be coveted by a naval power. From the time of Con- 
stantine down to the Crusades, or for nearly eight cen- 
turies, the rulers of Constantinople could usually command 
large and well-manned fleets. And this was enough to 
account for her imperial place in history. As an imperial 
city she must rise, decline, or fall, by her naval strength. 
She fell before the Crusaders in a naval attack ; and she 
was crippled to a great extent by the naval attack of 
Mohammed the Conqueror. During the zenith of the 
Moslem Conquest, she was great by sea. Her decline in 
this century has been far greater on sea than on land. 
When her fleet was shattered at Sinope, in 1853, the end 
was not far off. And when to-day we see in the Golden 
Horn the hulls of her ironclads moored motionless, and 
they say, unable to move, men know that Stamboul is no 
longer the queen of the Levant. 

As a maritime city, also, Constantinople presents this 
striking problem. For fifteen centuries, with moderate 
intervals, this city of the Bosphorus and the Propontis 
has held imperial rule. No other seaport city, either in 
the ancient or in the modern world, has ever maintained 
an empire for a period approaching to this in length. 
Tyre, Carthage, Athens, Alexandria, Venice, Genoa, Am- 
sterdam, have held proud dependencies by their fleets for a 
space, but for rarely more than a few generations or cen- 
turies. The supremacy of the seas, of which Englishmen 
boast, can hardly be said to have had more than two cen- 
turies of trial. The city of the Bosphorus has been tried 
by fifteen centuries of fierce rivalry and obstinate war ; 
and for long periods together she saw powerful enemies 
permanently encamped almost within sight of her towers. 
Yet she still commands the gates of the Euxine and the 
Hellespont, just as Herodotus and Polybius tell us that she 
did two thousand years ago. Nor can any man who has 



CONSTANTINOPLE AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 325 

studied that marvellous peninsula fail to see that, so soon 
as Constantinople again falls into the hands of a great 
naval power, she must recover her paramount control 
over the whole shore of South-Eastern Europe and North- 
Western Asia. 

Herodotus tells us how Darius' general, in the sixth cen- 
tury B.C., judged its position, in the well-known saying that 
Chalcedon, the city on the Asiatic shore opposite, must 
have been founded by blind men, for they overlooked the 
superior situation on which Byzantium was soon after 
placed. Thucydides records the part played by the city 
in the Peloponnesian war ; and Polybius, the scientific 
historian of the second century B.C., describes it with sin- 
gular insight. ' Of all cities in the world,' he says, ' it is 
the most happy in its position on the sea ; being not only 
secure on that side from all enemies, but possessed of the 
means of obtaining every kind of necessaries in the great- 
est plenty.' And he enlarges on its extraordinary com- 
mand of the commercial route from the Euxine to the 
Mediterranean. He explains the disadvantages of its posi- 
tion on the land side, and the reasons which hindered 
Byzantium from becoming a commanding city in Greece. 
The main reason was the proximity of the barbarous and 
irrepressible Thracians ; for the old Byzantium was never 
strong enough to wall in and defend the whole peninsula 
by the wall of Anastasius, nor was it rich enough to main- 
tain such an army as would overawe the tribes of the 
Balkan. 

No doubt the founders of Chalcedon on the Asian side 
were not blind, but they feared the Thracians of the Euro- 
pean side, and were not able to dispossess the tribe settled 
on the peninsula. But a problem arises. Why, if the situ- 
ation of Byzantium were so predominant, did it remain for 
a thousand years a second-class commercial city of Greece ? 



326 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

and then, why, in the fourth century, did it become the 
natural capital of Eastern Europe ? The answer is plain. 
The magnificent maritime position of Byzantium was neu- 
tralised so long as the Balkan peninsula and the valley of 
the Danube was filled with barbarous nomads. The great 
wars of Trajan and his successors, in the first and second 
centuries, for the first time brought the whole basin of the 
Danube into the limits of the empire. Thus, when Con- 
stantinople was founded, it was secure by land as well as 
by sea. When, in the fifth and sixth centuries, Italy, 
Spain, Gaul, and Africa were swept by a succession of 
Northern invaders, the Empire had command of great 
armies, ample to man the vast system of fortifications 
across her double peninsula. And thus she resisted the 
torrent which submerged and devastated Western Europe. 

The part played by Byzantium down to the time of Con- 
stantine was subordinate, but significant. It is frequently 
mentioned by almost all the ancient historians ; and of 
famous chiefs who were concerned with it we have Pau- 
sanias the victor of Platsea, Cimon, the son of Miltiades, 
Alcibiades, Epaminondas, Demosthenes, Philip of Mace- 
don, many Roman generals, the Emperors Claudius, Ves- 
pasian, Severus, Licinius, and Constantine. It is a strange 
accident that the city of the later empire and of the Sul- 
tans was the city wherein Pausanias, the victor of Pla- 
taea, was seized with the mania for assuming an Oriental 
tyranny, and that it was where the Seraglio now stands 
that the infatuated king perpetrated the horrid deed of lust 
and blood, which our poet introduces in his Manfred. Is 
there something in the air of that hill where we now stare 
at the ' Sublime Porte,' which fires the blood of tyrants to 
savage and mysterious crime ? 

The removal of the imperial capital from Rome to Byzan- 
tium was one of the most decisive acts on record — a 



CONSTANTINOPLE AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 32/ 

signal monument of foresight, genius, and will. Madrid, 
St. Petersburg, Berlin, are also capital cities created by the 
act of a powerful ruler. But none of these foundations can 
compare in scale and in importance with the tremendous 
task of moving the seat of empire a thousand miles to the 
East, from the centre of Italy to the coast of Asia, from a 
Latin to a Greek city, from a pagan to a Christian popu- 
lation. The motives which impelled Constantine to this 
momentous step were doubtless complex. Since the time 
of Trajan, Rome had not been the constant residence of 
the Emperors, except of Antoninus Pius, nor the regular 
seat of government. Since the time of Diocletian, Rome 
had been abandoned as the official centre of the empire. 
Many places east of it had been tried ; and Constantine, 
when resolved on the great change, seriously contemplated 
two, if not three, other sites. It had long been agreed that 
the imperial seat must be transferred towards the East ; 
and there was an instinctive sense that the valley of the 
Tiber was no longer safe from the incessant onward march 
of the Teutonic nations in arms. 

The tendency was to get somewhere south of the Dan- 
ube, and within reach of Asia Minor and the Euphrates. 
The greater chiefs had all felt that the empire must be 
recast, both politically and spiritually. By the fourth cen- 
tury it was clear that the empire must break with the 
rooted prejudices that surrounded the Senate of Rome 
and the gods of the Capitol. And Constantine, the half- 
conscious and half-convinced agent of the great change — 
the change from the ancient world to the modern world, 
from polytheism to Christianity — saw in tiie Church and 
Bishop of Rome a power which would never be his creat- 
ure. Dante tells us that ' Caesar became a Greek in order 
to give place to the Roman pastor.' There is much in 
this : but it is not the whole truth, for Caesar might have 



328 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

become a Spaniard, or a Gaul, or an Illyrian. Dante 
might have added that Caesar became an Oriental, in order 
to give place to the Goth. Constantinople from the first 
was a Christian city, with an orthodox Church ; but it was 
a Church that was, from the first, a department of the 
State. 

The topography, apart from the geography of Constan- 
tinople, may demand some words ; for the history of the 
city from Constantine to Abdul Hamid is based on its 
physical characters. We cannot doubt that the many 
delights of this spot, the varied resources of the surround- 
ing country, the combination of sea, bay, mountain, valley, 
terrace, and garden, as these rise one beyond the other, 
have made Constantinople for fifteen centuries the resi- 
dence of Emperors and Caliphs, the dream and pride of 
nations, and the crown of imperial ambition. 

Those who approach Constantinople from Greece, as all 
men should, have sailed through that long panorama of 
island, mountain, and headland which the ^Egean Sea 
presents, past 'Troy town' and the unknown home of its 
minstrel ; and every rock recalls some tale or poem for 
the three thousand years since European thought and arts 
rose into being across those waters. The Hellespont has 
been passed with its legends and histories, and the sea of 
Marmora with its islands of marble, its rich shores and 
distant ranges of mountain — and as the morning sun 
touches the crescents on her domes, the eternal city of 
New Rome bursts into view, looking on the East and the 
South across the blue waters of Propontis and Bosphorus, 
with her seven hills rising towards Europe one behind the 
other, each crowned with cupola and minaret, amidst ar- 
caded terraces, and groves of acacia, myrtle, and cypress. 

This glorious vision, if not the most beautiful, is the 
most varied and fascinating of its kind in Europe. Some 



CONSTANTINOPLE AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 329 

prefer the bay of Naples, or the bay of Salamis, or of 
Genoa ; but neither Naples, nor Athens, nor Rome, nor 
Genoa, nor Venice, have, as cities, anything of the extent, 
variety, and complexity of Constantinople, if we include 
its four or five suburbs, its magnificent sea landscape, its 
bays, islands, and mountains, in the distance. For Con- 
stantinople does not stand upon an open sea like Naples, 
or Genoa, but on a great marine lake with its shores, vine- 
clad hills, headlands, and pearly mountain ranges in the 
far horizon. Like Athens or Venice, it has a seaport 
without an open sea outside. And as a city, it is vastly 
more grand and varied than Venice, Athens, Florence, or 
Edinburgh. Hence, Constantinople combines such sea 
views as we find round the Western islands of Scotland 
or of Greece, with the summer sky and vegetation of Italy, 
and the mountain ranges which fill the horizon from the 
plains of Lombardy. 

Was it more beautiful in the age of the Empire than 
it is to-day ? Perhaps from a distance, from the sea, the 
Stamboul of to-day is a far more striking sight than the 
Byzantium of the Caesars. The minarets, an Eastern and 
Moslem feature, are the distinctive mark of the modern city, 
and do much to break the monotony of the Byzantine 
cupolas. There are four or five mosques which repeat and 
rival the church of the Holy Wisdom, and some of them 
have nobler sites. Nor were the towers and battlements 
of ancient architecture to be compared in beauty and in 
scale with those of Mediaeval and Moslem builders. But 
the city, as seen within, in the Isaurian and Basilian dynas- 
ties, we may assume in the five centuries which separate 
Justinian from the First Crusade, must have greatly sur- 
passed in noble art, if not in pictorial effect, the Ottoman 
city that we see. The enormous palace and hippodrome, 
the basilicas, churches, halls, and porticoes, with their 



330 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

profusion of marble, mosaic, bronzes, and paintings, their 
colossal figures, obelisks, and columns, the choicest relics 
of Greek sculpture, the memorial statues, baths, theatres, 
and forums — must have far surpassed the decaying rem- 
nant of Stamboul which so often disenchants the traveller 
when he disembarks from the Golden Horn. 

III. Antiqtrities of Constantinople. 

Constantine created his New Rome in 330, as never ruler 
before or since created a city. It was made a mighty and 
resplendent capital within a single decade. Italy, Greece, 
Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Mauritania, were despoiled of 
their treasures to adorn the new metropolis. Constantine 
built churches, theatres, forums, baths, porticoes, palaces, 
monuments, and aqueducts. He built, adorned, and peo- 
pled a great capital all at a stroke, and made it, after 
Rome and Athens, the most splendid city of the ancient 
world. Two centuries later, Justinian became the second 
founder of the city. And from Constantine down to the 
capture by the Crusaders, for nearly nine centuries, a suc- 
cession of Emperors continued to raise great sacred and 
lay buildings. Of the city before Constantine little re- 
mains above the ground, except some sculptures in the 
museum, and foundations of some walls, which Dr. Pas- 
pates believes that he can trace. Of Constantine and his 
immediate successors there remain parts of the hippo- 
drome, of walls, aqueducts, cisterns, and forums, some 
columns and monuments. Of the Emperors from Theo- 
dosius to the Crusades, we still have, little injured, the 
grand church of Sophia, some twenty churches much al- 
tered and mostly late in date, the foundations of palaces, 
and one still standing in ruins, and lastly the twelve miles 
of walls with their gates and towers. The museums con- 



CONSTANTINOPLE AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 33 1 

tain sarcophagi, statues, inscriptions of the Roman age. 
But we can hardly doubt that an immense body of Byzan- 
tine relics and buildings still lie buried some ten or twenty 
feet below the ground whereon stand to-day the serails, 
khans, mosques, and houses of Stamboul, a soil which the 
Ottoman is loth to disturb. When the day comes that 
such scientific excavations are possible as have been made 
in the Forum and the Palatine at Rome, we may yet look 
to unveil many monuments of rare historical interest, and, 
it might be, a few of high artistic value. As yet, the cut- 
tings for the railway have given almost the only oppor- 
tunity that antiquarians have had of investigating below 
the surface of the actual city, which stands upon a deep 
stratum of debris. 

One monument, eight centuries older than Constan- 
tine himself, has been recently disinterred, and curiously 
enough by English hands. It is one of the oldest, most 
historic, most venerable relics of the ancient world. The 
Serpent Column of bronze from Delphi, set up by the 
Greeks as base for the golden tripod to commemorate 
the final defeat of Xerxes, an object. of pilgrimage for 
Greeks for eight centuries, stands still in the spot where a 
Roman emperor placed it in the hippodrome ; and after 
2373 years, it still bears witness to the first great victory 
of the West over the East. When the East triumphed 
over the West nearly 2000 years later, the conqueror left 
this secular monument on its base ; and during the Cri- 
mean war English soldiers dug it out of the surrounding 
debris and revealed the rude inscription of the thirty con- 
federate states exactly as Herodotus and Pausanias record. 
With the bronze Wolf of the Capitol, it may count as the 
most precious metal relic which remains from the ancient 
world ; for the Crusaders melted down into pence every 
piece of bronze statuary they could seize, and carried off 



332 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

to St. Mark's, at Venice, the four horses that bear the 
name of Lysippus. 

Constantinople is rich, not in works of art, for those of 
the city have been wantonly destroyed, but in historic 
sites, which appeal to the scholar rather than to the public ; 
but in so singular a conformation of sea and land, the sites 
can often be fixed with some precision. We may still note 
the spot where daring pioneers from Megara set up their 
Acropolis a century and a half before the battle of Mara- 
thon ; we can trace the original harbour, the position of 
some temples, and the line of the walls. We can stand 
beside the burial-place of a long line of emperors, and 
trace the plan of the forums, palaces, and hippodrome 
where so vast a succession of stirring scenes took place, 
some of the earlier monuments and churches, the hall 
where Justinian promulgated the Corpus Juris which has 
served the greater part of Europe for thirteen centuries 
and a half. And, above all, we have the great Church in 
something like its original glory, less injured by time and 
man than almost any remaining mediaeval cathedral. 

The Church of S. Sophia is, next to the Pantheon at 
Rome, the most central and historic edifice still standing 
erect. It is now in its fourteenth century of continuous 
and unbroken use ; and during the whole of that vast 
epoch, it has never ceased to be the imperial fane of the 
Eastern world, nor has it ever, as the Pantheon, been 
desolate and despoiled. Its influence over Eastern archi- 
tecture has been as wide as that of the Pantheon over 
Western architecture, and it has been far more continuous. 
It was one of the most original, daring, and triumphant 
conceptions in the whole record of human building ; and 
Mr. Fergusson declares it to be internally ' the most per- 
fect and beautiful church ever yet erected by any Chris- 
tian people.' Its interior is certainly the most harmonious, 



CONSTANTINOPLE AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 333 

most complete, and least faulty of all the great domed and 
round-arched temples. It unites sublimity of construction 
with grace of detail, splendour of decoration with inde- 
structible material. It avoids the conspicuous faults of 
the great temples of Rome and of Florence, whilst it is far 
richer in decorative effect within than our own St. Paul's 
or the Pantheon of Paris. Its glorious vesture of marble, 
mosaic, carving, and cast metal is unsurpassed by the 
richest of the Gothic cathedrals, and is far more enduring. 
Though twice as old as Westminster Abbey, it has suffered 
less dilapidation, and will long outlast it. Its constructive 
mass and its internal ornamentation far exceed in solidity 
the slender shafts, the paintings, and the stained glass of 
the Gothic churches. In this masterly type the mind is 
aroused by the infinite subtlety of the construction, and 
the eye is delighted with the inexhaustible harmonies of a 
superb design worked out in most gorgeous materials. 

For Justinian and his successors ransacked the empire 
to find the most precious materials for the 'Great Church.' 
The interior is still one vast pile of marble, porphyry, and 
polished granite, white marbles with rosy streaks, green 
marbles, blue and black, starred or veined with white. 
The pagan temples were stripped of their columns and 
capitals ; monoliths and colossal slabs were transported 
from Rome, and from the Nile, from Syria, Asia Minor, 
and Greece, so that, with the Pantheon at Rome, this is 
the one example of a grand structure of ancient art which 
still remains unruined. The gilded portals, the jewels, 
pearls, and gold of the altar, the choir adornment of cedar, 
amber, ivory, and silver, have been long destroyed by the 
greedy soldiers of the Cross ; and the mosaics above with 
seraphim, apostles, prophets, and Christ in glory have been 
covered up, but not destroyed, by the fierce soldiers of 
Mahomet. 



334 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

It is a fact, almost without parallel in the history of 
religion, that the Musulman conquerors adopted the Chris- 
tian cathedral as their own fane, without injuring it, with 
very little alteration within, and even without changing its 
name. The Greeks did not adopt the form of Egyptian or 
Syrian temples ; Christians took for the model of their 
churches the law-courts, but not the temples of Polythe- 
ism ; Protestants have never found a practical use for the 
cruciform churches of Catholicism. But Islam accepted 
the Holy Wisdom as the type of its mosque ; partially 
concealed the Christian emblems and sacred mosaics, 
added without some courts and the four beautiful mina- 
rets, but made no structural change within. And thus 
the oldest cathedral in Christendom is the type of a thou- 
sand mosques ; and the figures of Christ and his saints, 
that a Roman emperor set up in his imperial dome, look 
down to-day after fifteen centuries on the Westminster 
Abbey of the Ottoman Caliphs. What a dazzling pano- 
rama of stirring, pathetic, and terrific scenes press on the 
mind of the student of Byzantine history as he recalls all 
which that vast fane has witnessed in the thousand years 
that separate the age of Justinian from that of Suleiman 
the Magnificent : from the day when the great emperor 
cried out, ' I have surpassed thee, O Solomon ! ' to the 
days when Ottoman conquerors gave thanks for a hundred 
victories over the Cross. Has any building in the world 
been witness to so vast a series of memorable events ? 

In historic memories, the walls of Constantinople can 
compare with her great Church ; for the ruined walls are 
still the most colossal and pathetic relics of the ancient 
world that remain in Europe. Except the walls round 
Rome, there is no scene in Europe so strange, so desolate, 
and mantled with such annals of battle, crime, despair, and 
heroism. Though the sea walls have been partly removed 



CONSTANTINOPLE AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 335 

and much injured by man, the vast rampart on the west 
which stretches from Blachernae on the Golden Horn to 
the Seven Towers on the Marmora, a distance of nearly 
four miles, is still, but for natural decay and disturbance, 
in the state in which it was left by Sultan Mohammed the 
Conqueror in the fifteenth century. It was then more 
than a thousand years old ; and during the whole of 
that period it had been increased, repaired, strengthened, 
doubled, and tripled. It is still a museum or vast cata- 
comb of Byzantine history. More fortunate than the 
walls of Rome and other ancient cities, the western walls 
of Constantinople have hardly been touched by the hand of 
man since the Turks entered. This complicated scheme 
of circumvallation, far stronger than the walls of Rome or 
of any other ancient or mediaeval city, made an impene- 
trable barrier, whilst adequately manned and defended, 
down to the invention of the heavy cannon. We can still 
trace the plan and form of the triple line of wall, of the 
moat, of the two causeways, of the fourteen gates, and 
the one hundred and ninety-four towers, and the ruined 
palace of the later emperors. 

Here and there the massive towers are riven and totter- 
ing, torn by cannon, earthquake, and centuries of neglect 
and decay. The shrunken city of Stamboul does not now 
touch them, and no populous suburbs have grown round 
them. Cemeteries with cypress and tombstones, the cupola 
of a small oratory, or the roof of a hospital, alone break the 
view. But the crumbling walls and towers stand in soli- 
tude amidst orchards and gardens, and nothing disturbs 
the student who deciphers inscriptions set up by Constan- 
tines, Leos, Basils, Comneni, and Palaeologi, and here and 
there a Roman eagle and a Greek cross. 1 The Golden 

1 They have been collected and explained by Dr. Paspates in his Bvfaprival 
MeX&rcu. 



336 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

Gate, with its two marble towers, prisons, palace halls, the 
famous Castle of Blachernae and the Seven Towers, carry 
us through a thousand years of history — but most of all 
we linger near the breach hard by the gate of S. Romanus, 
where the last Constantine met the Ottoman Mohammed in 
deadly grip, redeeming by his death four centuries of feeble- 
ness in his ancestors, as he fell amidst heaps of slain : — 

' With his face up to Heaven, in that red monument 
Which his good sword had digged. 1 

Of all cities of the world Constantinople is memorable 
for its sieges, the most numerous and the most momentous 
in the records of history. For long centuries together the 
city was a besieged fortress, and during nearly eight cen- 
turies her vast fortifications resisted the efforts of all 
foreign invaders. Goths, Huns, Avars, Slaves, Persians, 
Saracens, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Turks, and Russians 
have continually assailed and menaced them in vain. 
Great conquerors, such as Zabergan, Chosroes, Muaviah, 
Omar, Moslemah, Crumn, Haroun-al-Raschid, Bayazid, 
failed to shake them. For ten years a Persian camp 
stood in arms at Chalcedon across the Bosphorus ; for 
years the Saracens assailed it year by year in vain (674- 
677, and 717-718). These sieges were not mere expedi- 
tions against a single stronghold ; they involved the fate of 
an empire and a religion. Had pagans, fire-worshippers 
or Musulmans, nomad hordes or devastating Mongols suc- 
ceeded in piercing these walls before the fifteenth cen- 
tury, the course of civilisation would have been seriously 
changed. For a thousand years these crumbling ram- 
parts, which to-day we see in such pathetic desolation, 
were the bulwark of European civilisation, of the tradi- 
tions of Rome, of the Christendom of the East, and in 
no small degree of learning, arts, and commerce, until the 
great mediaeval reconstruction was ready to appear. 



CONSTANTINOPLE AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 337 

It is a striking proof of the enormous persistency of 
Byzantine history that the Bulgarians and Russians, both 
of whom are still pressing eagerly onwards with longing 
eyes set on the city of the Bosphorus, have been from 
time to time renewing these attacks for more than a thou- 
sand years. It was in 813 that Crumn, the great king of 
the Bulgarians, opened his terrible onslaught ; and it was 
nearly two centuries later that Basil, ' the slayer of the 
Bulgarians,' began his triumphant campaign against that 
secular foe. The first siege of Constantinople by Mos- 
lems, that of the Saracen Muaviah in 673, began nearly 
eight centuries before the last Moslem siege, that under 
the Ottoman conqueror in 1453. And the first attack on 
Constantinople by Russians, in 865, was separated by more 
than a thousand years from their last attack, when they 
reached San Stefano within sight of the minarets. For 
all this thousand years the Russian has hungered and 
thirsted for the ' Sacred City,' whether it were held by 
Romans, Greeks, Latins, or Ottomans — and hitherto he 
has hungered and thirsted in vain. 

They count more than twenty sieges in all ; but the 
most memorable are undoubtedly the triumphant repulse 
of Persians and Avars in the reign of Heraclius in 616, 
and again in 626 ; the glorious defeat of the Saracens in 
673, in the reign of Constantine iv., and again in 717, in 
the reign of Leo hi. ; and lastly, the two successful sieges 
— when Constantinople was captured by the Venetians and 
Crusaders in 1203-4; anc * again when it was stormed by 
Mohammed the Conqueror in 1453. Of all memorable 
and romantic sieges on record, these two are the most 
impressive to the historic imagination, by virtue of the 
crowding of dramatic incidents, the singular energy and 
wonderful resources they display, and the vast issues 
which hung on the event. The siege of Tyre by Alexan- 
Y 



338 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

der, of Syracuse by Nicias, of Carthage by Scipio, the two 
sieges of Jerusalem by Titus and by Godfrey, the succes- 
sive sackings of Rome, the defence of Rhodes and Malta 
against the Turks — none of these can quite equal in vivid 
colour and breathless interest the two great captures of 
Constantinople, and certainly the last. It stands out on 
the canvas of history by the magnitude of the issues in- 
volved to religion, to nations, to civilisation, in the glow- 
ing incidents of the struggle, in the heroism of the defence 
and of the attack, in the dramatic catastrophe and personal 
contrast of two typical chiefs, one at the head of the con- 
querors and the other of the defeated. And by a singular 
fortune, this thrilling drama, in a great turning-point of 
human civilisation, has been told in the most splendid 
chapter of the most consummate history which our lan- 
guage has produced. 

The storming and sack of Constantinople in the Fourth 
Crusade by a mixed host of Venetian, Flemish, Italian, and 
French filibusters, a story so well told by Mr. E. Pears in 
his excellent monograph, was not only one of the most 
extraordinary adventures of the Middle Ages, but one of 
the most wanton crimes against civilisation committed by 
feudal lawlessness and religious bigotry, at a time of con- 
fusion and superstition. It is a dark blot on the record of 
the Church, and on the memory of Innocent in., and a 
standing monument of the anarchy and rapacity to which 
Feudalism was liable to degenerate. The sack of Constan- 
tinople by the so-called soldiers of the cross in the thirteenth 
century was far more bloodthirsty, more wanton, more 
destructive than the storming of Constantinople by the 
followers of Mahomet in the fifteenth century. It had far 
less historic justification, it had more disastrous effects on 
human progress, and it introduced a less valuable and less 
enduring type of civilised life. The Crusaders, who had 



CONSTANTINOPLE AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 339 

no serious aim but plunder, effected nothing but destruc- 
tion. They practically annihilated the East Roman Em- 
pire, which never recovered from this fatal blow. It is 
true that the Byzantine Empire had been rapidly decaying 
for more than a century, and that its indispensable service 
to civilisation was completed. But the crusading bucca- 
neers burned down a great part of the richest city of 
Europe, which was a museum and remnant of antiquity ; 
they wantonly destroyed priceless works of art, buildings, 
books, records, and documents. They effected nothing of 
their own purpose ; and what they indirectly caused was 
a stimulus to Italian commerce, the dispersion through 
Europe of some arts, and the removal of the last barrier 
against the entrance of the Moslem into Europe. 

The conquest by the Ottomans in the fifteenth century 
was a very different thing — a problem too complex to be 
hastily touched. Europe, as we have seen, was by that 
time strong enough to win in the long and tremendous 
struggle with Islam ; it was ready to receive and use the 
profound intellectual and artistic impulse which was caused 
by the dispersion of the Byzantine Greeks. The Ottoman 
conquest was no mere raid, but the foundation of a Euro- 
pean Empire, now in the fifth century of its existence. 
The wonderful tale of the rise, zenith, wane, and decay of 
the European Empire of the Padishah of Roum — one 
of the least familiar to the general reader — is borne in 
upon the traveller to Stamboul in the series of magnificent 
mosques of the conquering sultans of the fifteenth, six- 
teenth, and seventeenth centuries, in the exquisite foun- 
tains, the mausoleums, the khans and fortresses, minarets 
and towers, and the strange city of kiosques, palaces, gates, 
gardens, and terraces, known to us as the Seraglio. In 
these vast and stately mosques, in the profusion of glow- 
ing ornament, porcelains, tiles, and carvings, in the incon- 



340 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

gruous jumble of styles, in the waste, squalor, and tawdry 
remnants of the abandoned palace of the Padishahs, we 
read the history of the Ottoman Turks for the last five 
centuries — splendour beside ruin, exquisite art beside 
clumsy imitation, courage and pride beside apathy and de- 
spair, a magnificent soldiery as of old with a dogged per- 
sistency that dies hard, a patient submission to inevitable 
destiny beside fervour, loyalty, dignity, and a race patriot- 
ism which are not to be found in the rank and file of 
European capitals. 

But Stamboul is not only a school of Byzantine history ; 
it has rich lessons of European history. We see the Mid- 
dle Ages living there still unreformed — the Middle Ages 
with their colour and their squalor, their ignorance and 
credulity, their heroism and self-devotion, their traditions, 
resignation, patience, and passionate faith. We can im- 
agine ourselves in some city of the early Middle Ages, the 
meeting-place of nations, Venice or Genoa, Paris or Rome, 
or even old Rome in the age of Trajan, where races, relig- 
ions, costumes, ideas, and occupations meet side by side 
but do not mix. The Moslem, the Armenian, the Greek, 
the Jew, the Catholic, have their own quarters, dress, lan- 
guage, worship, occupation, law, and government. They 
pass as if invisible to each other, and will neither eat, pray, 
work, trade, or converse with each other. Stand upon the 
bridge across the Golden Horn, or in the lovely cloister of 
Bayazid, and watch the green-turbaned hadjis, the softas, 
hammals, itinerant vendors, soldiers and sailors, boatmen 
and mendicants, Roumelian and Anatolian peasants, with 
all the cosmopolitan collection of the busy and the idle, 
from the Danube to the Euphrates. It is the East and 
the West on their one neutral meeting-ground, the one 
Oriental spot still left in Europe, the one mediaeval capital 
that has survived into the nineteenth century. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE PROBLEM OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 1 

The city of the Seven Hills upon the Golden Horn is at 
once the paradox of mediaeval history, and the dilemma of 
European statesmen. In the historical field it presents a 
set of problems which no historian has adequately solved, the 
full difficulties of which have been duly grasped only in our 
own age. In the political world it presents the great crux, 
over which former generations laboured, fought, and bled ; 
which our own generation seems willing to give up as 
insoluble, to ignore and to intrust to chance. 

There is danger that, in the minute research into local 
institutions that is now in vogue, the true historical impor- 
tance of Byzantine story may be forgotten; and danger 
also that, in the roar of battle round our democratic issues, 
the political importance of Constantinople as an eternal 
factor in the European balance of power may be quite lost 
to sight. Mediaeval and modern annals offer to the student 
no subjects of meditation more fascinating and more mys- 
terious than are the fifteen centuries of New Rome. And 
the dilemma of what is to be the ultimate fate of Constan- 
tinople is as urgent as ever, as perplexing as ever : — nay, 
it is much more urgent, more perplexing than ever. The 
ignorant prejudice of conventional historians about the 
rottenness of the 'Lower Empire' may be set against 
the purblind commonplace of conventional politicians about 
the Turkish question having been solved by the British 
occupation of Egypt. 

1 Fortnightly Review, May 1894, No. 329, vol. 55. 
341 



342 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

I. The Historical Problem. 

Since the works on Byzantine history, produced within 
the last thirty years by European scholars, it is no longer 
possible to repeat the stock phrases of the last century 
about the puerility and impotence of the ' Lower Empire.' 
By far the most important contribution to this task by 
English students is the Later Roma?t Empire of Professor 
Bury, whose two solid octavos bring the history of the 
Roman Empire of the East down to the foundation of 
the Roman Empire of the West, in 800 a.d. When he 
has completed his work down to the capture of Constan- 
tinople by the Turks, or at least to its capture by the 
Crusaders of 1204 a.d., it will be evident how much the 
history of the Later Empire has been distorted by jealousy, 
pedantry, and fanaticism. Even the genius of Gibbon 
could not wholly emancipate him from current prejudices ; 
and he necessarily worked without the essential materials 
which the industry of the last hundred years has collected. 
What has to be explained is the problem — how a political 
fabric, built on such foundations of vice and chaos, main- 
tained the longest succession recorded in history : — how 
a state of such discordant elements overcame such a com- 
bination of attacks : — what was it that made Constanti- 
nople, for some five or six centuries after the capture of 
Rome, the intellectual, artistic, and commercial metropolis 
of mediaeval Europe : — by what resources did she, during 
eight centuries, resist the torrent of Asiatic and Musul- 
man soldiery, before which the feudal chivalry of the West 
was so frequently baffled and crushed. 

The origin of these prejudices and of such falsification 
of history is plain enough. The judgment of Western 
Europe on the Eastern Empire was mainly derived from, 
and coloured by, that of Catholic churchmen ; and during 



THE PROBLEM OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 343 

the eleven centuries which divide the first Constantine 
from the last, the Catholic Church has borne an irrecon- 
cilable jealousy towards the Orthodox Church. Their 
very official titles — the first claiming universal obedience, 
the second claiming absolute truth — involved them in a 
war wherein there could be neither victory nor truce. 
The chiefs who claimed to rule as representatives of Char- 
lemagne, and all who depended upon them, or held title 
under them (that is, the greater part of Western Europe), 
were bound to treat the claims of the Eastern Empire as 
preposterous insolence. The traders of the Mediterra- 
nean regarded the Byzantine wealth and commerce much 
as the navigators of the sixteenth century regarded the 
wealth and trade of the Indies — as the lawful prize of the 
strongest. And lastly, the scholars, the poets, the chroni- 
clers of the West, from the age of the Crusades to the age 
of Gibbon, have disdained a literature, in which, as they 
said, spiritless and obsequious annalists recorded the do- 
ings of their masters in a bastard Greek. Western genius, 
Western Christianity, Western heroism and civilisation 
much surpass the Eastern type ; but, with such a combina- 
tion of causes for hostility and contempt, the West could 
not fail to be grossly unjust to the record of the East. 

The root of the injustice is the treating of a thousand 
years of continuous history as one uniform piece, and 
attributing to the noblest periods and the greatest chiefs 
the infamies and crimes which belong to the worst. Un- 
fortunately, we are much more familiar with the periods 
of rottenness and decline than with the ages of heroism 
and glory ; every one knows something of the Theodoras, 
Zoes, and Irenes, and, too often, very little of Heraclius, 
Leo, and Basil. The five centuries which intervene from 
Justinian to the Comnenian house — a period as long as 
that which separates Camillus from Marcus Aurelius — is 



344 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

the important part of the Roman Empire of the East; 
and the really grand epochs are in the seventh, eighth, and 
tenth centuries — whose heroes, Heraclius, Leo in., and 
Basil ii., may hold their own with the greatest rulers of 
ancient or of modern story. 

The most urgent problem of all is to find an adequate 
name to describe the Empire of which Constantinople was 
the capital for at least a thousand years. Every one of 
the conventional names involves a confusion or misrepre- 
sentation, great or small. ' Lower Empire ' — ' Greek Em- 
pire ' — ' Byzantine Empire ' — ' Eastern Empire ' — ' Later 
Empire ' — ' Roman Empire ' — either suggest a wrong 
idea, or fail to express the true idea in full. In what 
sense was the empire at Constantinople ' Lower ' ? It cer- 
tainly regarded itself as infinitely higher ; an advance even 
upon the classical Roman Empire. Justinian with justice 
holds his rule to be above that of Aurelian and Diocletian ; 
and from his day to the age of the great Charles, there 
was no power in Europe which could compare for a 
moment with the Roman Empire of the Bosphorus. The 
Empire was not ' Greek,' even in tongue, until the seventh 
century ; it was not Greek in spirit until the twelfth cen- 
tury ; till then hardly any of its emperors, soldiers, or 
chiefs had been Greek ; and it was never quite Greek by 
race. If we say ' Byzantine ' Empire, we are localising a 
power which was curiously composite in race, nationality, 
character, and tradition ; and the term ' Byzantine ' has 
a sense too directly contrary to Roman, and also has 
acquired a derogatory meaning. The great heroes of the 
empire are utterly unlike what men now understand by 
'Byzantine'; and there could hardly be a more violent 
contrast than that between the Alexius or Bryennius of 
Sir Walter Scott's romance and the Nicephorus Phocas or 
Basil ii. of actual history. ' Eastern Empire ' is erroneous 



THE PROBLEM OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 345 

and ambiguous ; for it suggests a break with Rome, and 
it applies to the kingdoms of Persians, Saracens, or Otto- 
mans, to the Sultan of Roum, or the Emperors of Nicaea 
and Trebizond. ' Roman Empire ' is accurate in a sense. 
But in the fourth and fifth centuries there were often 
two co-ordinate governments ; and after the coronation of 
Charlemagne, in 800 a.d., there were always two Roman 
Empires, and sometimes more. The term, ' Later Roman 
Empire,' which Mr. Bury adopts, is far better; but it 
might be applied to Valentinian 111., or to Romulus Au- 
gustulus ; and it fails to suggest the continuance of the 
Empire for a thousand years. After the coronation of 
Charles, the term, ' Later Roman Empire,' is inadequate ; 
and yet that event marks no essential break in the Em- 
pire at Constantinople. 

What we want is a term which will describe the con- 
tinuity of the Roman Empire, after its seat had been per- 
manently removed to the Bosphorus, and yet distinguish 
it from the revived Empire of Charles, the Holy Roman 
Empire, and all other powers which claimed a title from 
Rome. The features to be connoted are the prolongation 
and evolution of the vast political organism of Augustus 
and Trajan, its unbroken continuity, at any rate, down to 
the thirteenth century, and the dominant material fact 
that its permanent centre of government was transferred 
to the Bosphorus : that it had become Christian, but not 
Catholic. We go wrong if we drop the title 'Roman'; 
we go wrong if we ignore the fact of the transfer of sov- 
ereignty to Constantinople ; we go wrong if we fail to 
mark how much this implied, both in the spiritual and 
the political sphere. Under the conditions, the proper 
title is, 'The Roman Empire at Constantinople.' This 
is strictly accurate and fairly complete. It denotes the 
whole period of eleven centuries which separates the first 



346 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

Constantine from the last. It is impossible to suppose it 
applied either to Romulus Augustulus, Charlemagne, or 
Otto. And it defines the unbroken continuity of govern- 
ment from its permanent seat on the Bosphorus. A sim- 
pler equivalent would be — the Empire of New Rome. 

The next problem is to group the epochs of this immense 
succession of eleven centuries ; to show their diversity in 
the midst of continuity ; to distinguish the true periods of 
greatness and of growth, and the real eras of corrup- 
tion and decay. Unfortunately this is what Gibbon has 
omitted to do, what he has even done not a little to make 
difficult. Of his eight octavo volumes five are devoted to 
the history of about five centuries, and three only are given 
to the remaining eight centuries. He himself was struck 
with the apparent paradox, which he seems to excuse (at 
the opening of his 48th chapter) by his own and the reader's 
fatigue in the melancholy task of. recording the annals of 
the Eastern Empire. The genius of the greatest of his- 
torians has been betrayed into no error more capital than 
that which led him to describe the annals of the Empire 
from Heraclius to the last Constantine as 'a tedious and 
uniform tale of weakness and misery.' Gibbon, it is plain, 
was partly misled by the dearth of writings, and partly over- 
whelmed by the enormous scale of his ever-enlarging sur- 
vey. But with all that we now have at hand, it is wonderful 
to think that he was ever tempted to abandon ' the Greek 
slaves and their servile historians.' If this is a description 
of the Iconoclasts and the Basils, Leo the Deacon and 
Nicetas, language must have a new meaning. In truth, 'a 
tedious tale of weakness ' would be as aptly applied to the 
lives of William the Conqueror and the Plantagenet kings 
as to the exploits and adventures of Leo in., Constantine 
v., the two Basils, Nicephorus Phocas, John Zimisces, Kalo- 
Joannes, and Manuel. 



THE PROBLEM OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 347 

Even in the matter of literary culture and pure Greek, 
we are apt to compare the Byzantine historians with clas- 
sical or with our modern authors. Clearly we ought to 
compare them with their contemporaries in Europe. The 
iambics in which George of Pisidia celebrated the exploits 
of Heraclius, or those in which the Deacon Theodosius 
sang the recovery of Crete by Nicephorus Phocas, are not 
classical, but rather frigid as poetry ; yet they are far less 
barbarous than any Latin poetry of the seventh and tenth 
centuries. The Greek of Leo the Deacon in the tenth cen- 
tury does not differ from Xenophon's, from whom he is 
separated by more than thirteen centuries, so much as the 
English of Langland differs from that of Milton. The pro- 
longation of the Greek language over 2800 years from 
Homer to Tricoupi, its continual epochs of revival, purifi- 
cation, and ultimate return upon its own classical type, are 
among the most extraordinary facts in the evolution of 
human thought. And the persistence of the same written 
literature at Constantinople for at least twenty centuries is 
without parallel, at least in Europe. 

Happily our most recent historians are in the main 
agreed as to the essential epochs and the true heroes of 
Byzantine history. It is agreed that from the age of Jus- 
tinian to the Crusades the traditions of law, administration, 
Greek literature, commerce, and artistic manufactures were 
mainly preserved to Europe by the Roman Empire of the 
Bosphorus. It is agreed that for all active ends the Empire 
was extinguished by the Fourth Crusade, and had long 
been in an exhausted condition even at the opening of the 
First Crusade. The Isaurian and Basilian dynasties, that 
is the eighth, ninth, tenth, and part of the eleventh cen- 
turies, were epochs on the whole of valour, able govern- 
ment, prosperity, and civilisation, if compared with the 
condition of what used to be called the dark ages of 



348 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

Europe. These centuries, with the reigns of Justinian 
and Heraclius in the sixth and seventh centuries, consti- 
tute an epoch which is worthy to rank with the Roman 
Empire from Julius to Theodosius on the one hand, and 
on the other with the Holy Roman Empire from Otto the 
Great to Frederick n. The Roman Empire of Charle- 
magne, the Holy Roman Empire of Otto, both in sub- 
stance and in ceremonial, were much more truly imitations 
and rivals of the Roman Empire of the Bosphorus than 
they were revivals of the State of Augustus and Trajan ; 
of whom all real memory was entirely lost in the eighth 
century, whom, as heathens without the semblance of 
Church or Patriarch, it was impossible that Franks and 
Saxons should imitate or approve. 

At the close of his second volume Professor Bury sums 
up the function of the later Roman Empire under the five 
following heads, of which his whole work is an illustration 
and commentary : — 

i. It was the bulwark of Europe against the Asiatic 
danger ; 

2. It kept alive Greek and Roman culture ; 

3. It maintained European commerce ; 

4. It preserved the idea of the Roman Empire ; 

5. It embodied a principle of permanence. 

To these may be added the following : — : 

(a) It was the direct source of civilisation to the whole 

of the Balkan peninsula, and to all Europe east of 
the Vistula and the Carpathians ; 

(b) It was the type of a State Church — a spiritual 

power dependent on and co-operating with the 
sovereign power, and not, like the Catholic 
Church, independent and often antagonistic. 



THE PROBLEM OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 349 

The Empire of New Rome did much more than preserve 
the idea of the Roman Empire. It prolonged the Roman 
Empire itself in a new, and even in some respects, a more 
developed form. As Mr. Freeman well puts it, ' the East- 
ern Empire is the surest witness to the unity of history,' 
the most complete answer to the conventional opposition 
between 'ancient' and 'modern' history. That myste- 
rious gulf — that unexplained paralysis — which, we are 
told, occurred in the history of European civilisation about 
the fifth century, and was hardly removed by the ninth or 
tenth, has no existence whatever if we trace the internal 
condition of New Rome from the age of Theodosius to the 
age of Basil n. 

We are so greatly influenced by literary standards and 
classical art that we hasten to condemn an age in which 
we find these decay. It is quite true that pure Latinity, 
elegant Greek, and Attic art were not to be found in New 
Rome, and seemed to have perished with the coming of 
the Huns and the Goths. But this did not form the whole 
of /civilisation or even the bulk of it. In many things the 
civilisation of the Byzantine Empire was far higher than 
the civilisation of the Augustan Empire. The Court of 
Justinian or of Leo in., or of Irene, of Theophilus, of Basil 
l, or Constantine Porphyrogennetus, would have been con- 
sidered in the Middle Ages far more like civilised life than 
the courts of Nero, Hadrian, or Diocletian. In many of 
the most essential features of civil administration, the 
governments of Justinian, of the Iconoclast and Mace- 
donian dynasties, were really (in spite of barbarous punish- 
ments, tyranny, and extortion) a great improvement on the 
imperialism of the Caesars on the Tiber. 

Obviously the religious, moral, and domestic life — bad 
as it was from our standard — was better than that which 
is described by Juvenal and Tacitus, and was better than 



350 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

that of the greater part of Europe in the centuries between 
the fifth and the tenth. And in matters of taste, it is plain 
that those only can speak of the ' servile debasement ' of 
Byzantine art who have never traced the influence upon 
Europe of the industries, manufactures, inventions, and 
arts, which had their seat in Constantinople, who have not 
studied descriptions of the great Palace beside the Hippo- 
drome, of the Boucoleon and Blachernae, and who know 
nothing of S. Sophia, S. Irene, SS. Sergius and Bacchus, 
the Church Tes Choras, and all the remains of architec- 
tural and decorative skill that extend in unbroken series 
from the age of Justinian to the Crusades. The vast ad- 
ministrative, legal, and military organisation of Augustus 
and Trajan no more perished in the sack of Rome than 
did the language, the culture, and the aesthetic aptitude of 
the Greco-Roman world. Both took new forms ; they did 
not perish. 

After all that has been done by Finlay, Freeman, Bury, 
and Pears within the last generation, as well as by scholars 
in other countries, it is impossible to doubt that this is 
henceforth one of the cardinal truths of European history. 
Mr. Bury's five propositions as to the functions of the later 
Roman Empire are perfectly true, and may be emphasised 
and extended rather than qualified or diminished. What 
we now especially need is to have it explained in detail 
how these results came about. We want, the inner, eco- 
nomic, social, bureaucratic, industrial, and ecclesiastical his- 
tory of the Empire — not so much its court annals or its 
dynastic revolutions. We have had the imperial and polit- 
ical history traced in sufficient fulness ; the administrative 
and organic life of the society is what we now need to grasp 
and explore. This is obviously a most complex and diffi- 
cult task, only to be achieved by indirect means and the 
study of a variety of sources. The art, the industry, the 



THE PROBLEM OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 35 1 

trade, the manners, the statistics, the law, the theology, 
the political and civic institutions of the Roman Empire 
from the age of Heraclius to that of the Comneni is what 
we now need to explore. And it is a field in which Eng- 
lish scholars, apart from Finlay, Bury, and some theologians, 
have done little. 

Especially we need a History of Byzantine Christianity, 
written in the spirit of Milman — from the point of view 
of an enlightened historian and not of an official Church- 
man. Almost everything that we have yet got on the 
subject of the Byzantine Church is insensibly coloured by 
the Catholic or anti-Catholic bias. A history of Byzantine 
art, of Byzantine literature and language, of Byzantine 
manners, commerce, law, and municipal organisation as 
these existed between Justinian and Basil, ' the slayer of 
Bulgarians ' — a period of five centuries — would enable us 
to answer the enigma of Constantinople. On the conti- 
nent Krause, Heyd, Hopf, Gfrorer, Salzenburg, Mordtmann, 
Rambaud, Sabatier, de Saulcy, Labarte, Schlumberger, 
Bayet, Drapeyron, de Muralt, Riant, as well as many 
Greek, Russian, and Oriental scholars, have worked in 
these mines. Mr. Oman has given us a useful summary 
of Byzantine history in the series called The Story of the 
Nations. But in England, since Finlay, we have had 
little of original work except from Mr. Bury, who has yet 
not gone further than the eighth century. The most in- 
teresting and perhaps the most obscure period of all is the 
Basilian dynasty, from a.d. 867-1057. And on this we 
sorely need accessible guidance. All that Gibbon has to 
tell us of these two hundred years is contained in about 
one hundred pages, and Finlay has compressed his narra- 
tive into rather more than twice that space. 

When we have completely explored these various sub- 
jects we may be able to answer the problems: (1) How 



352 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

did the Roman Empire maintain itself at Constantinople 
for eleven centuries ? (2) Why was it able for eight cen- 
turies to resist not only the Western but the Eastern in- 
vasions, before which every other city and kingdom fell ? 
(3) Why was Constantinople for five centuries the most 
populous, wealthy, and civilised city in Europe ? 

The answer in general is a somewhat complicated one of 
several terms. First, the Roman Empire removed itself 
to the strongest and most dominant spot in all Europe. 
Next, it evolved a wholly new organisation : centralised, 
legalised, and industrial. It founded the most wonderful 
bureaucracy ever known. It developed a maritime ascend- 
ency, and a world-wide commerce. It eliminated every 
vestige of provincial, national, and race prejudice, and 
called every subject man from Sicily to the Euphrates a 
Roman and nothing else. And lastly, and perhaps mainly, 
it became the first, and for ages the only, Christian Em- 
pire, having a powerful Church, which was its faithful and 
loyal instrument, on whose mysterious prestige it rested, 
and which it always treated as part of itself. 

1. Nothing further need be said as to the unique source 
of strength, both for offence and for defence, which the 
genius of Constantine discovered on the Bosphorus. The 
removal of the seat of empire from the Tiber to the Bos- 
phorus was the only mode in which the Empire could have 
been preserved, whilst, at the same time, this made possi- 
ble its political, religious, and moral transformation. The 
exact steps, details, and ultimate type of this transforma- 
tion are precisely the points on which we need light. We 
see the stupendous machine which this bureaucracy and 
State Church became, but we know very little about its 
actual working and its inner life. We judge its power by 
results only, and by the startling paradox that the machin- 
ery of a most disparate organism goes on working undis 






THE PROBLEM OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 353 

turbed by fatuity, strife, and anarchy in the supreme 
centre. Whatever the vices and follies which raged in 
the imperial palaces for generations together, disciplined 
and well-armed troops, powerful navies, military engines 
and stores, skilful generals, able governors, and expert 
diplomatists, rise up time after time in infinite succession 
to save the empire, hold it together, restore its losses, and 
increase its wealth, and this over the whole period of eight 
centuries from Theodosius to Isaac Angelus. 

2. The material source of this strength in the empire 
was primarily its sea-power and its command for five cen- 
turies of the commerce of the whole Mediterranean. When 
we study the campaigns of Heraclius and of Nicephorus, 
when we follow in Leo the Deacon the great expedition 
to recover Crete, we are struck with the vast maritime 
resources, the engines and ships of scientific war which 
the empire possessed in the seventh and tenth centuries. 
Nothing in Europe at that date could produce any such 
sea-power. As Nicephorus Phocas very fairly told the 
angry envoy of Otto, he could lay in ashes any sea-board 
town of the Mediterranean. When the cities of Italy suc- 
ceeded to the commerce of Constantinople, they held it in 
shares and fought for it amongst themselves. But until 
the rise of Venice, Pisa, and Palermo, Constantinople ruled 
the seas from Sicily to Rhodes, and relatively to her con- 
temporaries with a far more complete supremacy. 

3. It was this maritime ascendency, this central position 
in the Bosphorus, and this vast Mediterranean commerce 
which was the foundation of the wealth of the empire — 
a wealth which, relatively to its age, exceeded even the 
wealth and maritime ascendency of England in our day, 
which for eight centuries hardly ever suffered a collapse, 
and was continually being renewed. We must discount 
the petulant sneers of the irritable Bishop Luitprand, when 

z 



354 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

baffled by the fierce Nicephorus. The silk industry, the 
embroidery, the mosaic, the enamel, the metal work, the 
ivory carving, . the architecture, the military engineering, 
the artillery, the marine appliances, the shipbuilding art ; 
the trade in corn, spices, oil, and wine ; the manuscripts, the 
illuminations of Byzantium, far surpassed anything else in 
Europe to be found in the epoch between the reign of 
Justinian and the rise of the Italian cities. Much of 
what we call mediaeval art decoration and art fabrics had 
their real origin, both industrial and aesthetic, on the 
Bosphorus, or were carried on there as their metropolitan 
centre. 

Nowhere else in Europe under the successors of Clovis 
and Charlemagne could such churches have been raised as 
those of the Holy Wisdom and Irene, such palaces as that 
beside the Hippodrome or the Boucoleon, such mighty for- 
tifications as those which stretched from Blachernae to the 
Propontis. Nowhere could Europe in the ninth and tenth 
centuries produce such enormous wealth as that possessed 
by Theophilus, Basil i., or Constantine Porphyrogennetus, 
or equip such fleets and armies as those of Nicephorus, 
John Zimisces, and Basil n. We are accustomed to com- 
pare the art and the civilisation of the Byzantine Empire 
with those of much later ages than its own, mainly because 
we have nothing else wherewith to compare it of its own 
epoch. If we honestly set it against the contemporary 
state of Europe, from the era of Justinian to that of the 
Crusades, it will be seen to be not only supreme in the tra- 
ditions of civilisation, but almost to stand alone. In the 
eleventh century, without doubt, Western Europe was or- 
ganised, and began its triumphant career, with the Catholic 
Church and the feudal organism in full development ; and 
from that date the Byzantine Empire ceased to be pre-emi- 
nent. But its vast resources and the splendour and civil- 



THE PROBLEM OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 355 

ised arts of Constantinople still continued to amaze the 
Crusaders, even down to the thirteenth century. 

The fact is that, for the five centuries from Justinian 
to Isaac Comnenus, the attacks on the empire, from the 
European side, at any rate, were the attacks of nomad, 
unorganised, and uncivilised races on a civilised and highly- 
organised empire. And in spite of anarchy, corruption, 
and effeminacy at the Byzantine court, civilisation and 
wealth told in every contest. Greek fire, military science, 
enormous resources, and the prestige of empire always bore 
down wild valour and predatory enthusiasm. Just as Rus- 
sia dominates the Turkoman tribes of Central Asia, as 
Turkey holds back the valiant Arabs of her eastern fron- 
tier, as Egyptian natives with British officers easily master 
the heroic Ghazis of the Soudan — so the Roman Empire 
on the Bosphorus beat back Huns, Avars, Persians, Slaves, 
Bulgarians, Patzinaks, and Russians. We need only to 
study the history of Russia and of Turkey to learn how 
the organising ability, the resources, and material arts of 
great empires outweigh folly, vice, and corruption in the 
palace. 

4. Of course a succession of victorious campaigns im- 
plies a succession of valiant armies ; and there is nothing 
on which we need more light than on the exact organisa- 
tion and national constituents of those Roman armies 
which crushed Chosroes, Muaviah, Crumn, Samuel, and 
Hamdanids. They are called conventionally 'Greeks'; 
but during the Heraclian, Isaurian, and Basilian dynasties 
there seem to have been no Greeks at all in the land forces. 
The armies were always composed of a strange collection 
of races, with different languages, arms, methods of fight- 
ing, and types of civilisation. They were often magnifi- 
cent and courageous barbarians, conspicuous amongst 
whom were Scandinavians and English, and with them 



356 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

some of the most warlike braves of Asia and of Europe. 
The empire made no attempt to destroy their national 
characteristics, to discourage their native language, relig- 
ion, or habits. Each force was told off to the service 
which suited it best, and was trained in the use of its 
proper weapons. They remained distinct from each other, 
and wholly distinct from the civil population. But as they 
could not unite, they seldom became so great a danger to 
the empire as the Praetorian guard of the Roman army. 
The organisation and management of such a heterogeneous 
body of mercenary braves required extraordinary skill ; but 
it was just this skill which the rulers of Byzantium pos- 
sessed. The bond of the whole was the tradition of 
discipline and the consciousness of serving the Roman 
Emperor. 

The modern history of Russia and still more the native 
armies of the British Empire will enable us to understand 
how the work of consolidation was effected. The Queen's 
dominions are at this hour defended by men of almost 
every race, colour, language, religion, costume, and habits. 
And we may imagine the composite character of the By- 
zantine armies, if we reflect how distant wars are carried 
on in the name of Victoria by Hindoos, Musulmans, Pa- 
thans, Ghoorkas, Afghans, Egyptians, Soudanese, Zanzi- 
baris, Negroes, Nubians, Zulus, Kaffirs, and West Indians, 
using their native languages, retaining their national habits, 
and, to a great extent, their native costume. The Roman 
Empire was maintained from its centre on the Bosphorus, 
somewhat as the British Empire is maintained from its 
centre on the Thames, by wealth, maritime ascendency, 
the traditions of empire, and organising capacity — always 
with the great difference that there was no purely Roman 
nucleus as there is a purely British nucleus, and also that 
the soldiery of the Roman Empire had no common arma- 



THE PROBLEM OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 357 

merit, and was not officered by men of the dominant race, 
but by capable leaders indifferently picked from any race, 
except the Latin or the Greek. Dominant race there was 
none ; nation there was none. Roman meant subject of 
the Emperor ; Emperor meant the chief in the vermilion 
buskins, installed in the Palace on the Bosphorus, and duly 
crowned by the Orthodox Patriarch in the Church of the 
Holy Wisdom. 

5. Here we reach the last, as I venture to think, the 
main element of strength in the Empire of New Rome — 
its alliance with, or rather its possession of, the Orthodox 
Church. The Roman Empire at Constantinople was really, 
if not in style, a Holy Roman Empire. The Patriarch was 
one of its officials. The venerable Church of the Holy 
Wisdom was almost the private chapel of the Emperor ; 
the Emperor's palace may almost be described as the Vati- 
can of Byzantium. The relations between the Emperor 
and the Patriarch were wholly different from the relations 
between the Emperor at Aachen and the Pope. Instead 
of being separated by a thousand miles and many tribes 
and peoples, the Emperor of the Bosphorus resided in the 
same group of buildings, worshipped, and was adored in 
the same metropolitan temple, and sat in the same council- 
hall with his Patriarch, who was practically one of his great 
officers of State. All students of the Carolingian or of the 
Holy Roman Empire know how immensely Pipin, Charles, 
the Henries, and the Ottos were strengthened by the sup- 
port of the Popes from Zacharias to Victor n. But the 
Papacy was a very intermittent, uncertain, and exacting 
bulwark of the Empire, and after the ad/ent of Hilde- 
brand, in the eleventh century, it was usually the open or 
secret enemy of the Empire. The Catholic Church was 
always the co-equal, usually the jealous rival, often the 
irreconcilable foe of the Emperor. It never was a State 



358 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

Church, and rarely, until the fourteenth century, was an 
official and obsequious minister of any emperor or king. 

But the Orthodox Church of Constantinople, from first 
to last, was a State Church, part of the State, servant of 
the State. There were, of course, rebel patriarchs, ambi- 
tious, independent, factious, and deeply spiritual patriarchs. 
There were whole reigns and dynasties when Emperor and 
Patriarch represented opposite opinions. But all this was 
trifling compared with the independent and hostile atti- 
tude of the Papacy to the Temporal Power. The Catholic 
Church represented a Spiritual Power independent of any 
sovereign, with a range of influence not conterminous with 
that of any sovereign. That was its strength, its glory, 
its menace to the Temporal Power. The Orthodox Church 
represented a spiritual authority, the minister of the sov- 
ereign, directing the conscience of the subjects of the 
sovereign, and in theory of no others. The Orthodox 
Church was the ideal State Church, and for a thousand 
years it deeply affected the history of the Byzantine Em- 
pire for evil and for good. It more than realised Dante's 
dream in the De Monarchia, a dream which the essence of 
Catholicism and the traditions of the Papacy made impos- 
sible in the West. It constituted a real and not a titular 
Holy Roman Empire in the East. 

Ruinous to religion, morality, and freedom as was this 
dependence of Church on the sovereign, it gave the sover- 
eign an immense and permanent strength. We can see 
to-day what overwhelming force is given to the rulers of 
the two great empires of Eastern Europe, who are both 
absolute heads of the religious organisation of their re- 
spective dominions. Now the Orthodox Church of the 
Byzantine Empire was a more powerful spiritual authority 
than the Russian Church, if not quite so abject a servant 
of the Roman Emperor as the Russian Church is of the 



THE PROBLEM OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 359 

Czar. And it was no doubt much more completely under 
the control of the Emperor than the imams and softas 
of Stamboul are under the control of the Padishah. The 
Roman Emperor, in spite of his vices, origin, or character, 
even in the midst of the Iconoclast struggle, was invested 
in the eyes of his Orthodox subjects with that sacred halo 
which still surrounds Czar and Sultan, and which is the 
main source of their autocratic power. It was this sacred 
character, a character which the de facto Emperor possessed 
from the hour of his coronation in St. Sophia until the day 
when he died, was deposed, or blinded, which held together 
an empire of such strangely heterogeneous elements, per- 
meated with such forces of anarchy and confusion. Chris- 
tians in the West contemn, and perhaps with justice, the 
servility, idolatry, and formalism of the Greek priesthood. 
They may be right when they tell us that the essence of 
Greek ritualism is only a debased kind of paganism. But 
the Orthodox Church is still a great political force ; and 
in the Byzantine Empire it was a political force perhaps 
greater than any other of which we have extant examples. 
If, then, we have to answer the historical problem — 
how was it that the Roman Empire succeeded in prolong- 
ing its existence for a thousand years after its final transfer 
to the Bosphorus, in the face of tremendous and, it seemed, 
insurmountable difficulties ? — the answer is, by a happy 
combination of three concurrent forces. The first was 
the prestige of the name and traditions of Rome. The 
second was the wonderful language of Hellas, and the 
versatility and astuteness of the Greek genius. The third 
was the organisation of an Orthodox Church, which, on the 
one hand, had a hold over the mass of the people hardly 
ever acquired even by the Church Catholic, which, on the 
other hand, was willing to become the faithful minister 
of an empire that it consecrated and venerated as its 



360 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

supreme master on earth. In one sense the empire was 
not strictly Roman, not Greek, not Holy. But by a mar- 
vellous combination of Roman tradition, Greek genius, 
and Orthodox sanctity it maintained itself erect for a 
thousand years. 

II. The Political Problem. 

The modern political problem presented by Constanti- 
nople is not in the least yet solved ; time has not removed 
it ; and recent events have not made it easier. Constanti- 
nople still remains, and ever must remain, one of the most 
important ports in the whole world. In the hands of a 
great military and naval power, it must always be one of 
the most dominant capital cities in the whole world. All 
that Cronstadt is in the Baltic, or Gibraltar in the West- 
ern, or Toulon in the Northern, or Malta in the Southern, 
Mediterranean — all these together and more — Constan- 
tinople might be made by a first-class power. Colonel 
F. V. Greene, of the United States Army, in his Russian 
Campaigns in Turkey, 1877-78, speaking of the first lines 
of Turkish defence, between the Black Sea at Lake Derkos 
and the Sea of Marmora, calls this position (nearly that of 
the wall of Anastasius in the fifth century) 'a place of 
vastly greater strength than Plevna.' He adds : ' No 
other capital in the world possesses such a line of defence, 
and when completed, armed, and garrisoned in sufficient 
strength (about seventy-five thousand men), it may fairly 
be deemed impregnable, except to a nation possessing a 
navy capable of controlling the Black Sea and Sea of 
Marmora, and a fleet of transports sufficient to land troops 
in rear of its flanks.' (Pp. 427, 428.) That is to say, in 
the opinion of one of the first of living authorities, who 
followed the Russian staff in the last war, Constantinople 



THE PROBLEM OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 36 1 

is practically impregnable in the hands of a first-class mili- 
tary and naval power. 

But Constantinople is not merely impregnable on the 
defensive side, in the hands of such a power, but if ade- 
quately manned and equipped, it is equally strong for 
offensive purposes; and, with the Bosphorus and the Hel- 
lespont duly fortified, it would command the Black Sea, 
the Sea of Marmora, and the ^Egean Sea. Much more 
than this : it would practically dominate Asia Minor ; for, 
as old Busbecq says, ' Constantinople stands in Europe, 
but it faces Asia.' It faces Asia, and it dominates Asia 
Minor ; and, if possessed by a first-class military and naval 
power of ambitious and aggressive spirit, the possession of 
Constantinople involves the practical control of Asia Minor, 
of the entire Levant, and, but for Cyprus and Malta, of 
North Africa and the whole Syrian coast. 

Nor is this all. In the hands of a first-class military and 
naval power, Constantinople must dominate the Balkan 
peninsula and the whole of Greece. With an impregnable 
capital, and the powerful navy which the wonderful marine 
opportunities of Constantinople render an inevitable pos- 
session to any great power, the rival races and petty 
kingdoms of the peninsula would all alike become mere 
dependencies or provinces. Here, then, we reach the full 
limit of the possible issue. Turkey is now no longer a 
maritime power of any account. Her magnificent soldiery 
forms no longer a menace to any European power, however 
small ; and, if it suffices to hold the lines of Constantinople 
on the Balkan side (which is not absolutely certain), it is 
liable at any moment to be paralysed by an enemy on the 
flank who could command the Black Sea or the Sea of 
Marmora. Of course, the Bosphorus has lost its ancient 
importance as a defence ; for a northern invader command- 
ing the Black Sea could easily descend on the heights 



362 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

above Pera, and with Pera in the hands of an enemy, 
Stamboul is now indefensible. That is to say, Constanti- 
nople is no longer impregnable, or even defensible, without 
a first-class fleet. Therefore neither Turkey, nor Bulgaria, 
nor Greece, nor any other small power, could have any but 
a precarious hold on it, in the absence of a very powerful 
fleet of some ally. 

From these conditions the following consequences result. 
Turkey can hold Constantinople as her capital with abso- 
lute security against any minor power. She could not 
hold it against Russia having a predominant fleet in the 
Black Sea, unless she received by alliance the support of a 
powerful navy. With the support of a powerful fleet, and 
her own reconstituted army and restored financial and 
administrative condition, she might hold Constantinople 
indefinitely against all the resources of Russia. It is per- 
fectly plain that no minor power, even if placed in Stam- 
boul, could hold it except by sufferance ; certainly neither 
Bulgaria, nor Greece, nor Servia, perhaps hardly Austria, 
unless she enormously developed her fleet, and transformed 
her entire empire. Turkey, as planted at present on the 
Bosphorus, is not a menace to any other power. The 
powers with which she is surrounded are intensely jealous 
of each other ; and by race, religion, traditions, and aspira- 
tions, incapable of permanent amalgamation. 

From the national and religious side the problem is most 
complex and menacing. Even in Constantinople the Mos- 
lems are a minority of the population ; and still more 
decidedly so in the other European provinces. But in 
most of the Asiatic provinces, Moslems are a majority, 
and in almost all they are enormously superior in effective 
strength to any other single community. To put aside 
Syrians, Arabs, Egyptians, Jews, and other non-Christian 
populations, there are, within the more western parts of 



THE PROBLEM OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 363 

the Turkish Empire, Bulgarians, Greeks, Albanians, vari- 
ous Slavonian peoples, Armenians, and Levantine Catho- 
lics, not so very unequally balanced in effective force and 
national ambition ; all intensely averse to submit to the 
control of any one amongst the rest, and unwilling to 
combine with each other. Each watches the other with 
jealousy, suspicion, antipathy, and insatiable desire to 
domineer. 

The habit of five centuries and the hope of ultimate 
triumph lead all of them to submit, with continual out- 
breaks and outcries, to the qualified rule of the Turk. 
But place any one of this motley throng of nationalities in 
the place of the Sultan, and a general confusion would 
arise. The Greek would not accept the Bulgarian as his 
master, nor the Bulgarian the Greek ; the Albanians would 
submit to neither ; the Armenians would seize the first 
moment of striking in for themselves ; and the Italian and 
Levantine Catholics would certainly assert their claims. 
No one of all those rival nationalities, creeds, and popula- 
tions could for a moment maintain their ascendency. No 
one of them has the smallest title either from tradition, 
numbers, or proved capacity, to pretend to the sceptre of 
the Bosphorus — and not one of them could hold it for a 
day against Russia, if she chose to take it. 

Assume that Russia has succeeded Turkey in posses- 
sion of Constantinople, the Bosphorus, and the Helles- 
pont. What is the result ? She would immediately make 
her southern capital impregnable, as Colonel Greene says, 
'with a line of defence such as no other capital in the 
world possesses.' She would make it stronger than Cron- 
stadt or Sebastopol, and place there one of the most 
powerful arsenals in the world. With a great navy in sole 
command of the Euxine, the Bosphorus, the Marmora, 
and the Hellespont, with a vast expanse of inland waters 



364 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

within which she could be neither invested nor approached 
— for nothing would be easier than to make the Helles- 
pont absolutely impassable — Russia would possess a ma- 
rine base such as nothing else in Europe presents, such 
as nothing in European history records, except in the days 
of the Basilian dynasty and the Ottoman Caliphs of the 
sixteenth century. With such an unequalled naval base 
she would certainly require and easily secure a further 
marine arsenal in the Archipelago. It is of no conse- 
quence whether this was found on the Greek or on the 
Asiatic side. There are a score of suitable points. An 
island or a port situated somewhere in the ^Egean Sea 
between Besika Bay and the Cyclades would be a neces- 
sary adjunct and an easy acquisition. With Russia hav- 
ing the sole command of the seas that wash South-Eastern 
Europe, dominating the whole south-eastern seaboard from 
a chain of arsenals stretching from Sebastopol to the 
Greek Archipelago, the entire condition of the Mediter- 
ranean would be transformed — let us say at once — the 
entire condition of Europe would be transformed. 

Has the British public fully realised the enormous 
change in the political conditions of the whole Levant 
and of Europe involved in the installation of Russia on 
the Bosphorus ? We are accustomed to treat the settle- 
ment of the Ottoman in Stamboul as a matter which is 
now of very minor importance. Why so ? Because the 
Turk is powerless for anything but precarious defence, 
under the preponderant menace of Russia on the north, 
whilst he is hemmed in by ambitious and restless neigh- 
bours in his last ditch in the Balkan peninsula. He can- 
not fortify the Bosphorus without Russian interference ; 
he cannot maintain his government in Crete without a roar 
of indignation from Greece. He is constantly harried by 
Bulgarians, Servians, Albanians, Montenegrins, and Epi- 



THE PROBLEM OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 365 

rots. He lives for ever on the defensive, he menaces no 
one ; and no one is afraid of him in Europe — because he 
has nothing in Europe but a shrunken province, and prac- 
tically 110 fleet. 

We are accustomed, again, to treat the position of 
Russia in the Balkan peninsula as one of influence more 
or less continuous, but as not practically affecting the 
Eastern Mediterranean and its lands. Russia has not yet 
effected any real footing on the peninsula. She finds it 
occupied by Roumania, Bulgaria, Servia, Austria, Turkey, 
and Greece. Over these Russia exercises an intermittent 
influence, but never controls them all at the same time ; 
and she often finds one or more of them in direct opposi- 
tion. Accordingly, we do not regard the Muscovite as 
dominant in the Balkan peninsula, much less in the Archi- 
pelago. But place Russia on the wonderful throne of the 
Bosphorus, with the inevitable addition of Adrianople and 
the Maritza Valley, at the very least, in Southern Rou- 
melia, and the whole situation is transformed. The pos- 
session of Constantinople by Russia, with her enormous 
resources and grand navy, means the control by Russia of 
the Bosphorus, the Marmora, the Hellespont, and, at least, 
of South-Eastern Roumelia. 

Could it stop there ? Would the absolute chief of an 
army of two millions and a half, with the third great navy 
of the world, fall into slumber in his new and resplendent 
capital, rebuild the Seraglio, or amuse himself in Yildiz 
Kiosk? He would immediately create the second great 
navy of the world, and for all Mediterranean purposes his 
navy would be at least the rival of the first. How long 
would Roumania and Bulgaria remain their own masters 
when they found themselves between his countless legions 
on the Pruth and his great fleet in the Golden Horn? 
What would Servia say to the change — or Austria ? 



366 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

Would the Albanians be content ? And what would 
become of the Musulmans in Roumelia ? The prospect 
opens at least five or six international imbroglios with 
knotty problems of race, religion, patriotism, and political 
sympathies and antipathies. Any one of these is enough 
to cause a European crisis — and even an embittered war. 

In the long run, though it might be a struggle prolonged 
for a century, Russia would in some form or other com- 
mand or control the entire peninsula from the Danube to 
Cape Matapan ; not, perhaps, counting it all strictly in 
Russian territory, but being dominant therein as is Vic- 
toria in the Indian peninsula. The geographical conditions 
of Constantinople are so extraordinary ; they offer such 
boundless opportunities to a first-class military and naval 
power; they lie so curiously ready to promote the ambi- 
tion of Russia, that the advent of the Czar to the capital 
of the Sultan would produce a change in Europe greater 
than any witnessed in the nineteenth century. The abso- 
lute monarch of a hundred millions, with an army of two 
and a half millions, possessing sole command of the Black 
Sea, Bosphorus, Marmora, and Hellespont, together with 
the incomparable naval basis which is afforded by this 
chain of four inland seas, would unquestionably be supreme 
master of the whole of Eastern Europe, which would then 
extend under one sceptre from the Arctic Ocean to the 
Greek Archipelago. 

But this is only one-half of the political problem, and 
perhaps the less difficult half. There is the Asiatic side to 
the problem, as well as the European side. Place the Czar 
in the Seraglio and what is to become of the Padishah ? 
Is he to retire to Scutari in his barge, and to restore the 
palace of Selim, which we know as hospital and barracks ? 
Is he to withdraw to Brusa or Smyrna, or retire at once 
to Aleppo or Damascus ? How long will the Russian be 



THE PROBLEM OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 367 

content to watch across the sea the minarets in Bithynia 
and the mountains of Anatolia, to look upon Abydos from 
Sestos without a desire to pay a visit to his secular rival ? 
Politicians talk with a light heart of hastening the depar- 
ture of the Moslem from Europe. But what do they pro- 
pose for him when he is withdrawn into Asia ? With the 
Czar at Kars, and under Ararat, at Constantinople and 
Gallipoli, commanding the whole northern coast of Asia 
Minor from Batum to Besika Bay, with the Armenians 
raging on the East and the Greeks and Levantine Chris- 
tians on the West the Sultan will hardly rest more tran- 
quilly in Brusa than he does to-day in Yildiz Kiosk. Are 
the millions of Musulmans in Asia Minor to be extermi- 
nated or driven across the Euphrates ? What is to be the 
end of this interminable Turkish problem, and is the 
twentieth century to install a new crusade ? 

All these things are, no doubt, very distant and entirely 
uncertain. But they are possible enough, and would give 
the statesmen of the future a series of insoluble problems. 
It would be needless to enlarge on the endless complica- 
tions they involve. They may serve to convince us that 
there is no finality in this Turkish question. The expul- 
sion of the Turk from Europe leaves the dilemma more 
acute than ever. The enthronement of the Russian on 
the Bosphorus settles nothing, concludes nothing, and can 
satisfy no one. It offers, on the contrary, a new set of 
difficulties and contests, more ominous and bitter than 
those which have raged for a hundred years since Cath- 
erine II. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

PARIS AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 

Of historic cities in Europe of the first rank we can 
count but four : Rome, Constantinople, Paris, London. 
For in the first rank of historic cities we can only place 
those capitals which have been, continuously and over a 
long succession of ages, the seats of national movements 
dominating the history of Europe : cities which have been 
conspicuous in mass, in central place, and in vast extent of 
time. Rome first, Constantinople next, stand far before 
all other European cities in fulfilling these conditions : but 
after them come Paris and London. Such fascinating cities 
as Athens, Florence, Venice, Rouen, Cologne, Treves, 
Prague, or Oxford — are all either far inferior in size and 
national importance, or else have known their epochs of 
glory only to die away for ages into small and local pre- 
eminence. Of all great capitals in the world, London has 
perhaps, during twelve centuries, suffered the least from 
violent shocks, from war and breaks in its history ; and it 
may be said to retain the most complete and continuous 
monumental record for that period. 

In the modern world, Paris is the only capital which can 
be placed beside London as an historic city of the first 
rank. The modern transformation of Paris has been even 
more destructive of the past than the modern transforma- 
tion of London, and, at the same time, it is much more 
brilliant : so that what remains of the historic city is much 
more completely screened and overpowered in Paris than 

368 



PARIS AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 369 

it is in London. Nor has Paris any ancient monuments 
which appeal to the popular imagination, with such direct 
voice as do our Abbey, and our great hall at Westminster, 
our Tower, our Temple Church, Lambeth Palace, and the 
Guildhall. Yet withal it may be said that, in a larger 
sense of the term, Paris is a city of even richer historic 
memories than London itself : richer, that is, to the 
thoughtful student of its history, though certainly not to 
the incurious tourist. If we take into account sites as well 
as extant monuments, if we call to our aid topography as 
well as archaeology ; if we follow up the early history of 
buildings which have been replaced, or are now transformed 
or removed ; if we study the local biography of Paris from 
the days of Julius Caesar to the days of Julius Grevy and 
Sadi Carnot — especially, if we include in the history of 
Paris that of its suburbs — St. Denis, Vincennes, St. Cloud, 
St. Germain, Versailles, — then the history of Paris is 
even richer, more dramatic, more continuous than that of 
London itself. 

Paris is by at least a century older than London in the 
historical record ; for it now has almost two thousand 
years of continuous annals. Paris was a more important 
Roman city than London. It has far more extensive 
Roman remains. The history of its first thousand years, 
from the first century to the eleventh, of its early founda- 
tions, churches, palaces, and walls, is far more complete 
and trustworthy than anything we know of London. It 
did not suffer any such gap or blank in its history, such as 
that which befell London, from the time of the Romans 
until the settlement of the Saxons. The fathers of men 
still living have seen at Paris, in its Bastille, at St. Denis, 
in Notre Dame, and the other churches, in the Tuileries, 
in Versailles, and old Hotel de Ville, relics of the past, 
records, works of art, tombs, and statues, before which 
2 A 



370 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

the great record of our Abbey and our Tower can hardly 
hold their own. 

The great era of destruction began little more than a 
century ago : the great era of restoration little more than 
half a century ago. Paris, too, has been the scene of 
events more tremendous and more extraordinary than any 
other city of the world, if we except Constantinople and 
Rome. London never endured any very serious or regular 
siege. Paris has endured a dozen famous sieges, culminat- 
ing in what is, perhaps, the biggest siege recorded in 
history. London has never known an autocrat with a 
passion for building, has had but one great conflagration, 
and but one serious insurrection. Paris has had in Louis 
xiv., and the first and second empires of the Napoleons, 
three of the most ambitious despots ever known ; and in a 
hundred years has had four most sanguinary and destruc- 
tive revolutions. Battles, sieges, massacres, conflagrations, 
civil wars, rebellions, revolutions, make up the history of 
Paris from the days of the Caesars and the Franks to the 
days of the Terror and the Commune. 

All this makes the topographical history of Paris far 
more copious and more stirring than the history of London, 
and indeed of any other modern city whatever. And the 
history of Paris has been far better told than the history 
of any other city. There is a perfect library about the 
history of Paris, with a special Museum, and a collection 
of 80,000 volumes and 70,000 engravings, devoted to that 
one subject. The histories reach over six centuries, from 
the work of Jean de Jandun, the contemporary of Dante, 
who begins his work about Paris by saying ' that it is more 
like Paradise than any other spot on earth ' — (an opinion, 
by the way, said to be shared by many Americans and 
some English) — and they go on to the splendid volumes 
by Hoffbauer, Fournier, and others, called Paris a travers 






PARIS AS AN HISTORIC CITY. . 371 

les ages : a book, I may say, only to be found in the 
British Museum and a few public libraries. Till the ap- 
pearance of Mr. Loftie's History of London (2 vols. 1883), 
we had not a single scholarly history of our great city. 
But for more than two centuries there have been produced 
a long series of works on the topography and monuments 
of Paris. And we have now a splendid series of treatises 
issued by the Municipal Council, the Histoire Generale de 
Paris, begun in 1865. When I was on the London County 
Council, I endeavoured to induce the Council to undertake 
a similar work for London ; but I found that, with an annual 
expenditure of some two millions, the Municipality of Lon- 
don had no power to expend a penny on such an object. 1 

1 Amongst other valuable books of history and illustration are : Androuet 
du Cerceau, Les plus excellents Bastiments de France, 2 vols. fol. Paris, 1576. 

Israel Silvestre, Views in old Paris, fol. Paris, 1665. 

Perelle, Les delices de Paris, fol. Paris, 1 763. 

Piganiol, Description de Paris. Paris, 1 742. 

Dulaure, Histoire de Paris, 10 vols. 8vo. Paris (2nd ed.), 1 823, with 
views and maps. 

De Guilhermy, Ltineraire archeologique de Paris, 1855. 

Lacroix, Curiosites de la Ville de Paris. 

Pernot, Le lieux Paris, io\. 1838. 

A. P. Martial, Ancien Paris, a series of 300 etchings. Paris, fol. 1 866. 

D. R. Rochette, Souvenirs du Vieux Paris. Paris, 1836, fol. 

Destailleurs (Hippolyte), Recueil d'Fstampes. Paris, fol. 1863, repro- 
ductions. 

C. Chastillon, Topographie Francaise, 1612. 

J. B. Rigaud, Recueil Choisi, 1750. 

P. G. Hamerton, Paris, Old and New, 4to, 1885. 

Albert Lenoir, Statistique Monumentale de Paris, 1861-1875. 

S. Sophia Beale, The Churches of Paris from Clovis to Charles X., 8vo, 

1893. 

The Publications of the Societe de Phistoire de Par„s, annual volumes, 

1874-1894- 

For purely popular books there are, Old and New Paris, by Sutherland 
Edwards, now publishing by Cassell and Co. in parts, 1893-94. 

A. Hare, Paris 1887; and, lastly, there is a fair historical account in 
Joanne's illustrated popular Guide to Paris. 



3/2 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

With all this prodigious wealth of historic record beneath 
our feet as we tread over old Paris, how little do we think 
of any part of it, as we stroll about new Paris of to-day. 
We lounge along the boulevards, the quays and 'places,' 
with thoughts intent on galleries and gardens, theatres and 
shops, thinking as little of the past history of the ground 
we tread as a fly crawling over a picture by Raphael thinks 
of high art. Haussmann, and the galleries, the Boule- 
vards, and the opera smother up the story of Paris, much 
as a fair with its booth, scaffoldings, and advertisements 
masks the old buildings round some mediaeval market-place. 
Ceci tuera cela, said Victor Hugo of the book and the 
Cathedral. No ! it is not the book which has killed old 
Paris. It is Haussmann and his imitators, the architect- 
ural destroyers, restorers, and aesthetic Huns and Vandals. 
Not that we deny to Haussmannised Paris some delightful 
visions, many brilliant, some even beautiful effects. But 
to most foreign visitors, and perhaps to most modern 
Parisians, Haussmann has buried old Paris both actually 
and morally — hiding it behind a screen, disguising it with 
new imitation work, or dazzling the eye till it loses all sense 
of beauty in the old work. 

The effort to recall old Paris when we stand in new Paris 
certainly imposes a strain on the imagination. When we 
stand on some bright morning in early summer in the 
Place de la Concorde whilst all is gaiety and life, children 
playing in the gardens, the fountains sparkling in the sun, 
and long vistas of white stone glistening in the light, with 
towers, spires, terraces, and bridges in long perspective, 
and the golden cross high over the dome of the Invalides, 
it is not easy to recall the aspect of the spot we stand on 
when it was soaked with the blood of the victims of the 
guillotine from King and Queen to Madame Roland and 
Charlotte Corday ; we forget that every tower and terrace 



PARIS AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 373 

we look on has resounded to the roar of cannon and the 
shouts of battle, with fire and smoke, with all the forces 
of destruction and all the passions of hell — not once or 
twice but repeatedly for a century; nay, how the same 
scenes of carnage and of battle have raged through Revo- 
lution and Fronde, League and St. Bartholomew, and 
English wars and feudal faction fights back to the days of 
Counts of Paris, and Franks, Huns, Gauls, and Romans. 
And after all these storms, the city still smiles on us as a 
miracle of gaiety, brightness, industry, and culture, keep- 
ing some scar, or remnant, or sign of every tempest it has 
witnessed. 

It has happened to us at times to stand on some beauti- 
ful coast on one of those lovely days which succeed a storm, 
when ripples dance along the blue and waveless sea, whilst 
the glassy water gently laps the pebbled beach, and yet 
but a few hours before we have seen that same coast lashed 
into foam, whilst wild billows swept into the abyss precious 
things and priceless lives of men. So I often think Paris 
-looks in its brightness and calm a few short years after one 
of her convulsions ; fulfilling her ancient motto — flitctnat 
nee mergitur. Her bark rides upon every billow and does 
i not sink. Fresh triumphs of industry and art and knowl- 
edge follow upon her wildest storm. 

I It is the history, not the present aspect of Paris, that 
i is my present subject. I can remember Paris before 
.the second empire began, before the new Boulevards, the 
J strategical avenues, the interminable strait lines and the 
< mechanical restorations of the last forty years ; I can 
recall Paris in the days when it was for the most part a 
I labyrinth of narrow, short, and often winding streets, with 
■the sombre impasses, the irregular courts, and vistas of 
I gable, attic, cornice, and turret that Meryon loved so well, 
and which Israel Silvestre has recorded with such patient 



374 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

care, and here and there a Gothic fragment in the simple 
state of natural decay and gradual incrustation. Since 
then I have watched for forty years the process of demo- 
lition and of restoration — the destruction, construction, 
reconstruction, on which such enormous sums, so much 
energy and skill, have been bestowed. I will try to avoid 
the dangerous field of art, of archaeology, of criticism and 
taste, treading my way warily per ignes suppositos cineri 
doloso. I will offer no opinion on these high matters of 
aesthetic judgment. Let every man and woman judge for 
himself and herself whether new Paris be more beautiful 
than old Paris, if Haussmann had a finer genius than 
Pierre de Montereau and Philibert Delorme, if symmetrical 
boulevards and spacious avenues are a nobler sight than 
picturesque alleys — how far old buildings in decay should 
be 'restored,' and if it is good to sweep away whole 
parishes, churches, halls, mansions, and streets by the 
dozen, in order to make a barrack or a 'place? There is 
much to be said on both sides of the question : but I shall 
hold my peace on these profound aesthetic problems, for it 
is safer to interfere as arbiter in a dog-fight than to venture 
as umpire into the battle of the styles. My task is the 
plainer and humbler one of topography and the historic 
record. And my historic interests are impartial. I am 
seeking only to identify all memorable events of the past 
with their true local association. To my mind, the historic 
record covers all memorable things, all conspicuous names 
in the long evolution of the ages. 

I have in Paris an old and learned friend who for fifty 
years has lived in Paris, studied Paris, loved Paris, as only 
a Parisian can love his own city. His habit is to read 
every book he can meet with that relates to the topography 
of Paris, and then he walks about and verifies what he 
reads on the spot. I often stroll about the city with my 



PARIS AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 375 

friend and listen to him as he pours out volumes of topo- 
graphic lore. We pass through the modern screen of 
Haussmannic Paris : we leave the boulevards and their 
roar, and in a moment we are again in the old world of the 
eighteenth or seventeenth century ; just as when we turn 
out from Victoria Street into Deans' Yard and the Abbey 
Cloister. So in Paris we pass swiftly beneath a portal and 
the roar ceases. The modern streets, to which our tourists 
confine their walks, form after all only a gigantic screen 
behind which much of old Paris still remains untouched. 

1 Here,' said my old friend to me but a few years ago, 
'in this quiet street, the Rue d? Argenteitil, with the rickety 
cour d'honneur, the bit of greenery and the bust, is the 
house where Corneille lived and died ; close by, in the Rue 
St. Anne, is the house where Bossuet died.' Both houses 
lay in streets between the Rue St. Honore and the new 
Avenue de V Opera : both have now disappeared. ' Come,' 
said he, 'into St. Rock. Here is the simple tomb of 
Corneille who lies beneath our feet ; a medallion is all his 
monument ; a little further on is an inscription to the 
memory of Bossuet.' And as we pass down the steps of 
the church, ' Here,' he says, ' was the famous battle between 
Bonaparte, the young soldier of the Convention, and the 
sections of Lepelletier, the counter Revolution of 1795.' 
It was Carlyle's famous ' whiff of grapeshot,' which he 
oddly enough supposed to have closed the Revolution. 
Carlyle declares that the traces of the balls are visible on 
the fagade of the church : but they seem to have disap- 
peared now. 

'And new,' he would say, ' come and see tne fruit in the 

I Marche St. Honore. On that spot opposite stood the 

Library of the Dominican order of monks called Jacobins; 

the Library was dedicated to the Dauphin, on the day of 

his birth, 1638. That Dauphin, the son of Louis xni., 



3/6 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

born under the rule of Richelieu, was Louis xiv. At the 
Revolution the Library was hired by the political club 
called the " Friends of the Constitution." But these con- 
stitutional friends ended in friends of Robespierre and 
Marat ; and thus the Library of the Dominican monks, dedi- 
cated in servile terms to Louis xiv. under the auspices of 
Richelieu, has given its name in all modern languages to 
sanguinary revolution.' 

And now let us make our way, still keeping behind the 
screen of the new avenues, to the quaint old Place des 
Victoires, where the gilt statue in the centre, once dedi- 
cated viro immortali — to the ' grand monarque ' — has 
undergone in the last hundred years as many changes as 
the successive governments of France, out of which the 
' great king ' has at last returned to his original place. 
And so we come to St. Eustache, that aenigma in the 
history of art, a Gothic Church built by Renascence artists 
in a wonderful medley of two different styles ; and we pass 
in to look at the grand tomb of the great Colbert. 

Thus we cross over to the vast Halles Centrales, and 
thence to the delightful Marche aux Innocents, with the 
fountain of Pierre Lescot and Jean Goujon — to my mind, 
at least in its original form, the most perfect work of the 
Renascence — now it is much transformed, but still in 
effect most lovely. For my part, I prefer the second of 
the three shapes which the fountain has received within 
the present century. In that old Marche aux Innocents I 
loved on a bright summer day to sit for hours, listening to 
the splash of the fountain and the gay voices of the chil- 
dren at play. It used to be a bit of old Paris : and worthy, 
with its colour, warmth, and varied perspective, to rank 
with a market-place in Verona or Genoa. Close by, in the 
small street de la Ferronnerie, then much narrower, Henry 
iv, was assassinated by Ravaillac ; and on the spot where 



PARIS AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 



377 



we stand was the grim burial-ground and charnel-house of 
the Church of the Innocents. Quite close by, across the 
new Rue de Rivoli, was the house of Coligny where he 
was murdered in the St. Bartholomew. In the Rzte St. 
Denis is one of the houses in which Moliere (Poquelin) was 
said to have been born. He certainly died in No. 34 Rue 
de Richelieu, opposite the fountain which bears his name. 

Then we pass across to the old city, the original Lutetia, 
the Paris of Julius Caesar, of Julian, of Clovis, and Hugh 
Capet. There on the quay beside the apse of Notre Dame 
we stop to mark the spot where stood the house of Canon 
Fulbert where Abailard knew, taught, and loved Heloi'se, 
and then we wander on to what once was Rue du Fouarre, 
now almost swamped in the new Rue Monge, where stood 
the old school of Theology and Arts. Dante calls the 
street vico degli strami ; and he records Sigier, the famous 
doctor who taught there ; and some have supposed that he 
actually lodged in this spot. Another suggestion ( which 
has high authority) is that from that spot he could watch 
the South Rose Window in the transept of Notre Dame, 
which suggested to him the idea of the Celestial Rose of 
Paradise. Thus my old friend and I are wont to saunter 
on talking of the schools of Paris, which for several cen- 
turies have played so vast a part in the history of France 
and of Europe, and which during the twelfth and thir- 
teenth centuries were the main intellectual centre of the 
West. And we look in at the Sorbonne to see the fine 
tomb of Richelieu in his church, which has the earliest 
dome ever built in Paris, or we stand for a moment before 
the well-known house on the Quai Voltaire, where the 
literary dictator of the eighteenth century died in the 
plenitude of his fame. 

Thus we stroll on to the Botdevard St. Germain, and at 
the corner of the Rue Bonaparte we drop in at the old 



378 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

church of St. Germain des Pres, to the historian one of the 
most memorable in Europe, for its foundation dates from 
thirteen centuries ago, and parts of what we see are far 
older than any church in London. There, with fragments 
of Merovingian building, we find the tomb of the greatest 
of modern philosophers — Rene Descartes. And as we 
come into the quarter of the Ecole de Medicine (a little 
below the square of the Ode'on, between it and the Boule- 
vard St. Michel), ' here,' says my friend, ' is the " terre sainte 
de la Revolution," ' and he takes off his hat as a mark of 
respect, for he is a republican of the type of old Carnot, 
but in no sense a Jacobin. Then we come to the Muse'e 
Dupuytren, the surgical museum of Paris, formerly the 
refectory of the convent of the Cordeliers friars, of the 
Franciscan order, and in the revolution the Cordelier club 
of Danton and Camille Desmoulins. Strange that the 
garb designed in the thirteenth century by the blessed 
St. Francis to express humility and love — the rough belt 
of cord — should become in the eighteenth century the 
synonym of passionate terrorism. A little further off was 
the house where Danton lodged and thus his statue is now 
placed beside it. My friend knew the nephew of Danton, 
who remembered the great tribune. And close by, I have 
had pointed out to me the house where Charlotte Corday 
stabbed Marat in his bath. 'There/ said my friend once, 
'in the terrible days of May, 1871, against that baker's 
shop, I saw as he lay dead in his gore the body of poor 
Jules — an excellent soul but a flighty — and for three days 
no one dared to touch or remove it.' 

Somewhat higher up the hill, just above the Sorbonne, 
we came upon a dingy little inn in a back street. There 
is a Hotel (then called St. Quentin) where J. J. Rousseau 
first stopped when he arrived in Paris, and there he first 
saw his wife, Therese Levasseur, who was a servant maid 



PARIS AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 379 

there ; the story is told well in the Rousseau of Mr. John 
Morley. And we wander up the hill to the old St. Etienne 
du Mont, that strange potpourri of Renascence, Gothic, and 
classical bits ; and there we search for the tombs of Racine 
and of Pascal, the body and monument of Racine having 
been removed from the old Port Royal, where he was orig- 
inally laid, to be placed here beside Pascal. 

Pascal lived and died close by this St. Etienne du Mont. 
I shall never forget the effect on my mind when one day 
sauntering up the hill from the Luxembourg garden to the 
observatory, I saw an old and dingy building of the seven- 
teenth century, now a women's hospital. ' What is that ? ' 
I asked. 'That,' said my friend, 'is the Port Royal of 
Paris, a dependance of the central Port Royal des Champs, 
and it was spared when the great seat of Jansenism was 
destroyed. What you see is the house where Sceur Ange- 
lique and the Arnauds removed for peace, which sheltered 
the Jansenists during twenty-five years of their most brill- 
iant time. There Pascal met the Arnauds ; there often 
came also Racine in his later years of theological mysti- 
cism.' It is the only surviving monument of that wonder- 
ful movement in France that we know as Jansenism. 

That is the historic way of seeing Paris. But how 
many thousands of our tourists believe they know Paris as 
well as London, and have exhausted all its sights, and 
hurry through Paris, and yet they could not tell where the 
Convention had its hall, or how it came there, or where 
the bones of king and queen and the other victims of the 
guillotine were laid, and why they were thrown in that spot, 
or where the guillotine stood : nor have they seen the cells 
where Marie Antoinette and Danton, Vergr.iaud and the 
Girondins passed their last hours — or could distinguish 
the parts of the Louvre, or tell for whom the many L's and 
H's and M's are inscribed — or where our Henry v. lived 



380 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

when he was ruler of France after Azincourt, and where 
was the Palace of St. Louis, or of Philip Augustus, or Clovis, 
or the original Lutetia of the Parisii. 

Let us try to group the record of Paris in historic epochs 
and in their right chronological order. 

It is easy to realise the Lutetia of the Romans, the first 
Gaulish settlement. Loukhteith, its Celtic name, is said 
to mean ' the stronghold in the morass,' — not 'mud-city,' 
as Carlyle calls it, — nearly the same as Llyn-dyn, or Lon- 
don, which means the Lake-town. The island (or eyot as 
we say in the Thames), in the Seine a little below the 
junction of the Marne, where the Bievre flows into the 
Seine, formed an excellent fastness. Caesar has given a 
vivid account of the siege of Paris in 52 B.C., and from 
the top of the Pantheon we can stand and trace the cam- 
paign of Labienus, as told by the mighty general of Rome. 
The historic record of Paris thus begins 1946 years ago. 
It was a city of some, but not of great importance in the 
Roman Empire, its most famous incident being that it was 
the favourite residence of the Emperor Julian in the middle 
of the fourth century. In a well-known passage in his 
Misopogon, he speaks of his dear Lutetia, of its soft and 
delightful climate, and the richness of its vines. 

There is something strangely suggestive in the associa- 
tion of Paris with the brilliant, philosophical, wrongheaded 
young Caesar, with his paradoxical ideals, romantic adven- 
tures, and tragic end. 

It is well known that the grand Roman remains called 
Les Thermes, adjoining the Cluny Museum, belonged to the 
palace of the Caesars, the great hall forming the frigi- 
darium of the Baths, and the rest of the foundations have 
been fairly made out. Other Roman remains are the altar 
found under Notre Dame, many altars and tombs, both 
Pagan and Christian, a large collection of objects in the 



PARIS AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 38 1 

Carnavalet Museum, some remains of city walls of the 
fourth century, the famous inscription of the nautae or 
watermen's gild of Paris, two aqueducts, that of Arcueil 
on the south near Bicetre, and that of Chaillot near the 
Palais Royal, an amphitheatre, east of the Pantheon near 
the R. Monge, a second palace beneath the Conciergerie, 
several cemeteries and tombs, in the R. Vivienne on the 
north, and also in the south, a Roman camp, a factory of 
pottery, a mass of antiquities at Montmartre, the Mons 
Mar lis, I think, not the Mons Marty rum. 

This forms a mass of Roman antiquities which together 
raise Paris to the rank of importance amongst the scanty 
remnants of ancient civilisation in Northern Europe. In 
the Thermes we have the Roman Louvre, in the altar of 
Jupiter the antitype of Notre Dame, in the cemetery of the 
R. Vivienne the Roman Pere-la-Chaise, in the foundations 
below the Palais de Justice, the Roman Hotel de Ville, in 

. the Parvis de Notre Dame perhaps the Roman Forum, the 

: predecessor of the Place de Greve. 

There is seldom to be met so striking a bit of city to- 

: pography as the long history of evolution in the Cite, or 

! island, of Paris. First, it was a group of palisaded eyots 
in a broad river spreading out on both sides into swamps 
— the river stronghold of a tribe called by the Romans 
Parish, a word possibly connected with Bar, which is 
thought to signify a frontier (Bar-sur-Aube, etc.). Then 
this river stronghold is joined to the mainland by two 
bridges not in a straight line but at opposite ends of the 

i island and both doubtless defended ; it is next a Roman 
city, ultimately walled, with its central temple, its munici- 
pality, its quays, and some outlying buildings, the Im- 
perial Palace, the amphitheatre, cemeteries, camp, and the 

i like, on the mainland, both north and south : one bridge, 
now the Pont au cliange, opening into the Place du Chd- 



382 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

telet ; the smaller bridge, now Petit Pont, higher up the 
river over the narrow arm, at the end of the R. St. Jacques. 

This Roman city, mainly on the island, but with an- 
nexes, north and south, on the mainland, according to the 
legend of St. Genevieve, repels the assault of Attila, is cap- 
tured by Clovis at the end of the fifth century, and is made 
his capital. During the early monarchy, the island was 
the city, the home of the kings, the seat of the church, of 
government, and of justice, crowded with narrow streets 
and churches, and densely populated. Gradually as the 
walls of Paris were extended in a series of circuits from 
the twelfth to the eighteenth century, the island city was 
eased of its close population, and at last in our own day 
was cleared altogether by gigantic sweeps of destruction 
and reconstruction. It once contained some 50,000 inhabi- 
tants, at least fifty or sixty streets, and more than twenty 
churches. To-day it has few private houses left, except 
at each end. As we said, the Cite consists of Cathedral, 
Palais de Justice, and Saint e Chapelle, Conciergerie and 
Prisons, Prefecture of Police, Chamber of Commerce, a 
huge hospital, a huge barrack, a flower market — vast 
1 places,' gardens, quays, and Morgue. This is almost all 
that stands on the Paris of Julian, Clovis, and Hugh Capet. 

It is a task full of historical teaching to trace the suc- 
cessive circuits and the walls of the city as it gradually 
grew. Each circuit represents an epoch in the history of 
France. First comes the old Roman and Gallo-Roman 
circuit — the Cite or island with some fortified post at the 
head of the North Bridge (PI. du Chatelet) and at the 
South Bridge (R. St. Jacques) extending on the South 
mainland as far as the Thewnes with villas, theatres, ceme- 
teries, and establishments outside the city circuit. The 
second circuit is that of Louis the Stout, the great restorer 
of the monarchy (1130), who built the Grand Chatelet on 



PARIS AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 383 

the site of the Place du Chdtelet, and the Petit Chdtelet on 
the Quai St. Michel (left bank). The third circuit is that 
of the great king Philip Augustus (1200), who built the 
Louvre, completed Notre Dame, and carried the walls 
North as far as St. Eustache, South as far as the Pan- 
theon, and included the smaller island, so that the original 
Cite was now but a sixth of the city. Next comes the 
fourth circuit, raised by Etienne Marcel in the middle of 
the fourteenth century, just after Poitiers during the great 
English War, who is duly commemorated by the fine 
equestrian statue beside the Hotel du Ville. Marcel laid 
the foundations of the Bastille, and repaired and strength- 
ened rather than extended the circuit of Philip Augustus ; 
and then the whole work was completed by Charles v. in 
the second half of the fourteenth century. The fifth great 
circuit is that of Richelieu under Louis xiii. who carried the 
city walls Northwards as far as the existing inner Boule- 
vards, and the R. Richelieu and its quarter is one of its 
additions ; and Southwards it inclosed the whole district of 
the Luxembourg and its gardens to the Jardin des Plantes. 
The sixth great change came in the reign of Louis xiv. 
who conceiving himself invincible in France, if not in 
Europe, found fortifications in Paris needless and bar- 
barous. Accordingly in his reign the old walls of Henry 
iv. and Richelieu were razed, and the Boulevards that we 
know were constructed as spacious avenues. On the site 
of the ancient Tour de Nesle, the Institute and the College 
Mazarin were built ; the Louvre was completed and trans- 
formed into an Italian palace ; the Tuileries were contin- 
ued until they joined the Louvre ; the Invalides and other 
great works were continued, and finally Paris received its 
character of an open modern city of Palladian architecture. 
The seventh great change was in the reign of Louis xvi. 
just before the Revolution, when for purely fiscal purposes 



384 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

the octroi barrier was carried forward to inclose vast dis- 
tricts not before within the walls. This was adopted by 
the Revolution and completed by Napoleon. The eighth 
and final circuit was that of L. Philippe in 1840, the fortifi- 
cations which held the German army at bay for four 
months — ■ which it is now proposed to destroy for a mili- 
tary circuit even more vast. The story of the successive 
circuits of Paris is the history of France in its critical 
epochs. 

After the political and military history of the city comes 
the history of its religious foundations, the Churches, 
Abbeys, and confraternities. No one can suppose, till he 
has gone into it, the enormous number of these, their 
strange antiquity, their rich and stirring history. The 
fragments of these abbeys and churches that we see to-day 
are the scanty remnants of vast edifices and a dense popu- 
lation scattered and gone — just as a column or an arch at 
Rome survives to tell us of the mighty city of the Caesars 
with its millions. The Revolution, the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury, the Napoleons, Haussmann, and the Municipal Coun- 
cil have swept away the old churches and convents of 
Paris by hundreds and thousands. The immense clear- 
ances in the Island Cite, those between and around the 
Louvre and the Tuileries, the new Boulevards and broad 
Avenues, have destroyed scores and scores. The new 
Hotel Dieu and the 'places ' in front of and round Notre 
Dame, the Barrack of the Guard and the Tribunal de Com- 
merce and Prefecture of Police have between them demol- 
ished more than twenty entire streets and at least twenty 
churches, chapels, oratories, and religious edifices. The 
names of churches and foundations destroyed survive in 
the countless St. Jacques and St. Pierres, the Capucins, 
Jacobins, Mathurins, and so forth, that we find in the 
streets and passages. All those who are seriously inter- 



PARIS AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 385 

ested in the ecclesiastical antiquities of old Paris should 
study the very excellent guide just published — The 
Churches of Paris, from Clovis to Charles X., by S. Sophia 
Beale, with illustrations by the author (London, 1893). It 
collects, in a useful and interesting manner, a mass of 
information as to the old churches of Paris. 

We forget, in their new casing, the antiquity of those 
which remain. The Madeleine which we stare at as a 
bran-new Greek Temple is as old as the thirteenth century 
in foundation. It is contemporary with St. Louis, and was 
in origin the chapel of the country palace of the Arch- 
bishop of Paris — exactly answering to Lambeth Palace. 
So too the Pantheon — which Englishmen are too wont to 
look on as an imitation of St. Paul's, and a mere piece of 
eighteenth century classicism — is one of the oldest and 
most interesting monuments in Christendom. The church 
of Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, who is said 
to have roused the citizens to resist Attila the Hun, was 
founded to contain her tomb in 508 by Clovis and 
Clotilda the first Christian King and Queen of the Franks. 
Clovis and Clotilda and many of their race were there 
buried, beside the Jeanne d'Arc of the fifth century. A 
vast abbey rose there ; its name was frequently changed. 
The tombs and the relics were transferred at times to St. 
Etienne du Mont, with which it is closely associated. The 
name, the exact spot, the building, have been constantly 
altered. The church that we see, which is little more than 
a hundred years old, has been three times a church, and 
three times converted into a secular monument which it is 
to-day. It is the older Westminster Abbey of Paris, for it 
goes back to times before Arthur, and to a century before 
the coming of the monks amongst the Saxons. The church 
which fourteen centuries ago was dedicated to the first 
champions of Northern Christianity, has been the burying- 

2B 



386 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

place of Mirabeau, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Marat, and has 
now again been made a secular monument in order to hold 
the ashes of Victor Hugo. 

' St. Germain ' means to an English ear aristocratic, 
magnificent, exclusive. But historically, St. Germain is 
the abbey founded by Childebert, the son of Clovis in 542, 
half a century before Augustine came to Canterbury. Its 
church was the burying-place of many kings of the first 
dynasty. The church that we see in the Boulevard St. 
Germain is of the eleventh and twelfth centuries ; but it 
is said to contain some fragments of carving, capitals, and 
columns in the apse from the church of Childebert. The 
ancient, but probably not the original, tombs of the Mer- 
wings have been removed to St. Denis and to the Museums. 
Hugh Capet, the founder of the third dynasty, was Abbot 
of St. Germain. It was one of the greatest foundations 
in Christendom. We may read in the Histoire Generate a 
full account of it, with many illustrations at different times. 
It was one of the greatest centres of Benedictine learn- 
ing. Mabillon, Monfaucon laboured there. They lie in 
the church with Descartes and Boileau. 

The Abbaye, the prison of the Revolution, was part of 
the monastery, and was only removed in the third empire 
in my own memory. The famous Pre aux clercs, renowned 
in romance and memoir* in the drama and in art, where the 
gallants of the Renascence fought their duels, was the 
riverside meadow of the learned monks. What a world it 
is ! Here is a church, the Westminster Abbey of the first 
Frank kings at a date when the Britons were fighting the 
heathen Saxons inch by inch — the home for twelve cen- 
turies of a mighty order and the central seat of their 
learning — the abbey of the mitred sovereign who gave 
his name to the dynasty of France, the home of modern 
French learning, — the scene of the duels of Henri 11. and 



PARIS AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 387 

the massacres of September — now a poor maimed and 
restored fragment of Romanesque architecture, drowned 
in the torrential magnificence of a Napoleonic Boulevard, 
and giving its ancient name to the luxurious retreat of 
impotent bigotry. 

St. Denis is the true Westminster Abbey of Paris, the 
burying-place of so many kings since Dagobert. It com- 
memorates Dionysius, a Christian martyr of the third 
century in the Decian persecution, called the first bishop 
of Paris. Dagobert, in the seventh century, built here a 
great basilica ; but in the twelfth century Suger made it 
one of the great cradles of pointed architecture. If we 
could see St. Denis as it existed down to the Revolution 
with all its tombs, its monuments, and its treasures intact, 
our own Abbey could hardly compare with it in historical 
interest. Accustomed to the hallowed gloom of our own 
Abbey, we shudder at the new, scraped, gilt revivalism of 
St. Denis to-day. But though its treasures are scattered, 
and the bones torn from its desecrated graves, and the old 
glass is destroyed with the tombs, statues, carvings, and 
wood work, though the Viollet-le-Ducs have had their will 
upon the old church — yet the historical mind must recog- 
nise, when it has recovered its temper, that the church of 
the great Abbot Suger still presents to us a type with 
which few buildings of the Middle Ages can vie in histori- 
cal memories. 

He who will follow up the histories of these Abbeys, — 
of Ste. Genevieve, of St. Germain, St. Denis, St. Victor, 
the foundation of William of Champeaux, of the other 
St. Germain, opposite the Louvre, and St. Jacques de la 
Boucherie — who will study the history of the schools of 
Paris, so famous from the eleventh to the fourteenth cen- 
turies and the growth of the University, incorporated by 
St. Louis in the thirteenth century — will come to see how 



388 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

completely, during the Middle Ages, Paris was the intel- 
lectual centre of Catholicism, if Rome was its centre of 
government. And he who will watch all that goes on 
to-day in the quarter between Notre Dame and the Invalides 
will understand how deep are the roots of this organised 
Catholicism still — in spite of Voltaire, Rousseau, Revolu- 
tion, and Commune. 

We may still see in Paris three typical masterpieces of 
Gothic art, each one recording a great chief in a central 
epoch. The first is the Abbey of St. Denis, built in 1140 
by Suger, the friend and fellow-worker of St. Bernard, the 
great minister of Louis the Stout. The next is the Cathe- 
dral of Notre Dame, practically completed about sixty years 
later in the reign of Philip Augustus. The third is the 
Sainte Chapelle, built in 1 245 by his grandson, Saint Louis. 
Within the space of this one hundred years, from 1140 to 
1245, the pointed style in France arose, nourished, and 
reached perfection. These three buildings are associated 
with the three great kings of French Feudalism. St. 
Denis is perhaps the earliest complete example of the 
pointed style : it is earlier than our Salisbury by a hundred 
years. As the Westminster Abbey of France, as the type 
of the first pointed style in its central home, St. Denis 
must be reckoned, at least by the historian, as the cradle 
of pointed architecture, even more truly than the dome of 
St. Peter's at Rome is the cradle of the domed architect- 
ure of the Renascence. 

Notre Dame, to the historian if not to the artist, is the 
typical, central, Gothic Cathedral. It is almost, if not 
absolutely, the earliest of the great pointed Cathedrals in 
their maturity. Its noble facade is altogether the grandest, 
most majestic, most permanently satisfying of all the great 
creations of the pointed style — at least if, in the mind's 
eye, we conceive it with all its carving and statues perfect 



PARIS AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 389 

in their original form, and perhaps with its towers carried 
some hundred feet higher by spires in some such way as 
Viollet-le-Duc conceived. If there be pointed Cathedrals 
which surpass Notre Dame in mass, richness, and beauty, 
and there can be but three others, the historical importance 
of Notre Dame stands pre-eminent, as the work of the 
French monarchy at its highest point, as the cathedral of 
their capital, the intellectual centre of Catholicism in the 
thirteenth century — the high water-mark of Western Chris- 
tendom. He who would understand the Middle Ages 
should make a minute study of one of these mighty works, 
with the admirable monographs of the French archaeol- 
ogists. Notre Dame, with its triple portals, and the gallery 
of the kings, its carvings and statues, the exquisite screen 
within round the choir, its majestic fagade and noble towers, 
had no superior in Gothic Art, whilst it failed least in 
stability and simplicity, the one side where Gothic art is 
usually prone to err. It is a happiness to be able to 
remember Notre Dame before the restoration began : when 
it was surrounded by a labyrinth of picturesque streets 
and buildings, and the grey fagade rose up in proud pathos 
from out the gables in crumbling and battered decay. 

The Cathedral has never before been seen as we see 
it to-day : for it now stands alone in vast open spaces, 
detached from the houses, churches, chapels, and palaces 
which were piled up round it. To-day it looks too much 
like a huge model, or disinterred ruin, set in an open-air 
museum. It is no longer the central cathedral of Catholic 
France: it is a sight, a relic, a national monument, an 
ecclesiastical Palais des Thermes : from the restored frag- 
ments of which the city, and all that can recall its builders 
has been unsparingly swept into oblivion. 

Thirdly, the Sainte Chapelle, the work of St. Louis, in 
the middle of the thirteenth century, is accepted as the 



390 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

type of pointed art in its zenith. It may be called the only 
quite perfect work of Gothic art, mainly because its small 
scale necessarily frees it from the besetting weaknesses 
of Gothic art when it essays the grandest problems of the 
builders' science. Nor need the historian of art regret the 
restoration so fiercely as does the artist. When Viollet-le- 
Duc took it in hand, it was a mutilated ruin, out of which 
the ordinary visitor could not reconstruct its original glow. 
The paint may be overdone ; the colours are not always 
harmonious ; the new glass is not equal to the old. But 
its restoration by the most learned of modern antiquarians 
enables the unlearned to judge the effect of Gothic archi- 
tecture in its glory, and to understand the pregnant remark 
of Mr. Fergusson that Gothic architecture might well be 
named the painted-glass style of building. To the histo- 
rian, this Chapel, the domestic oratory of St. Louis, the 
purest hero of the Middle Ages, the church of the palace 
of the French kings in their noblest era, the entrancing 
masterpiece of pointed architecture, must remain as one 
of the typical buildings in the world. 

The mass of buildings, of which the Sainte Chapelle is 
part, exactly answers to our palace of Westminster ; and 
our palace alone can compare with it as a relic of the Feudal 
monarchy. The Conciergerie prison, the adjacent hall, and 
the towers which we see along the Quai de V Horloge, cor- 
respond with the remains of the old palace of Westminster, 
which was finally destroyed when the Houses of Parliament 
were built. The Sainte Chapelle answers to St. Stephen's, 
of which the exquisite crypt alone survived the fire of 1834. 
Westminster Hall answers to the Salle des Pas Perdus, 
which took the place of the great Hall of St. Louis. The 
Palais de Justice answers to the Law Courts of West- 
minster which were in use till removed in 1882. The 
Tour de P Horloge exactly repeats our Clock Tower. Now 



PARIS AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 39I 

the French palace is in foundation far more ancient than 
the English ; more of its ancient parts remain ; and its 
historical record is longer, and almost more crowded with 
incident, than our own. The French palace is the suc- 
cessor of the Municipal palace of Roman Lutetia ; and 
traces of this building have been preserved. It was cer- 
tainly the Parisian palace of Clovis and his dynasty, of 
Charlemagne and his dynasty, and it was the capital seat 
of the Counts of Paris, when they became kings of France. 
It only ceased to be a royal residence in the age of 
Francis i. and Henri n. It was thus for a thousand years 
the home of the monarchs of the Seine valley. It is 
significant of French history that, whereas in England Par- 
liament has finally ousted both Monarchy and Justice from 
the Palace of Westminster and installed itself in the royal 
abode and even taken its name, in Paris it is Justice and 
Police which have appropriated the Palace in the island Cite 
and have long ago ousted both Parliament and Monarchy. 
In England we have nothing of the old palace left but 
the crypt of St. Stephen's, some cloisters, a few chambers, 
and the great Hall. In France they have rebuilt their old 
Hall ; but they have their Chapel almost entire. And 
whereas in Westminster we have the old palace now re- 
built, and absorbed in Barry's modern perpendicular, in 
Paris they have still the shell of the old towers and gate- 
way, and some fine work of the age of St. Louis within the 
Conciergerie building. There is some noble masonry in 
what is called the Kitchen of St. Louis, evidently the sub- 
structure of his palace, and many other parts of his work 
within the precincts of the prison. Few prisons have a 
record more stirring. Here, during the Revolution, all the 
chief prisoners passed their last hours. We may still see 
the cell where Marie Antoinette uttered her last prayers, 
where Robespierre lay in agony, and Danton and Vergn- 



392 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

iaud thundered out their latest perorations, — and they 
show you, too, the traditional scene of the mythical last 
supper of the Girondins, which figures so melodramatically 
in the famous romance of Lamartine. 

This Conciergerie, with the hall of the Cordelier Club, 
the Musee Dupuytren, is the only extant building in Paris, 
which is closely associated with great scenes of the Revo- 
lution. The Bastille is gone, the Tuileries, the Hotel de 
Ville, the Hall of the Convention in the R. de Rivoli, the 
Jacobin Club, the prisons, the Temple, Abbaye, La Force, 
Ckdtelet, and the rest. So, too, the tombs of Mirabeau, 
Voltaire, Rousseau, Marat, Louis xvi., and Marie Antoinette 
no longer hold their bones, and cenotaphs record the 
spot where they were laid. Etiam periere sepulchra. New 
Haussmannic streets cover the soil, wherein the ashes of 
Danton and Vergniaud, Charlotte Corday and Madame 
Roland, moulder unknown. Of the Revolution no build- 
ings remain but only sites ; and the only edifices, which 
survive to speak to us of the September massacres and 
the Terror, are the dining-hall of the followers of St. 
Francis and the palace of St. Louis, the knight and crusader. 

In spite of destruction and reconstruction, the history of 
the great edifices of old Paris is wonderfully instructive, 
even that of the buildings which have wholly disappeared. 
But they must be studied in the learned and elaborate 
works, such as those of Dulaure, Piganiol, Viollet-le-Duc, 
Lacroix, Lenoir, Guilhermy, Fournier, Hoffbauer, Fergus- 
son, Hamerton, in the Histoire Generale, and in Paris a 
travers les Ages, in the splendid series of etchings and 
engravings of old Paris, which may be found in the library 
of the Camavalet Museum, and in our British Museum. 
Bastille, Louvre, Hotel de Ville, Tuileries, Luxembourg, the 
Cite, St. Germain, Ste. Genevieve, would each require an 
essay, or a volume with maps and plans and restorations, 



PARIS AS AN HISTORIC CITY. 



393 



to make them intelligible. But those who seek to know 
what Paris has been in the long succession of ages may 
still revive it in their minds, with the aid of the mass of 
literature that is open to them, and if they will study not 
only the extant churches, but such works of domestic art 
as the Hotel Cluny, and Hotel de Sens, Hotel la Valette, the 
house in the Cours la Reiue, and the Hotel Carnavalet. 

A careful study of Silvestre, Ducerceau, and Meryon 
will give some idea of old Paris, with its vast walls, gates, 
towers, castles, its crowded churches, its immense abbeys, 
its narrow winding streets, its fetid cemeteries, gloomy 
courts and impasses, its filthy lanes, and its bridges loaded 
with houses. We may linger about the old remnants of 
churches, the flotsam and jetsam of the Mediaeval Catholi- 
cism, such bits as the tower of St. Jacques, and the portals 
of the two St. Germains and of St. Nicolas dcs Champs, the 
old churches of St. Julien le Pauvre, and St. Martin des 
Champs, the church of St. Severin, and the chapel of the 
Chateau de Vince nnes. Then let us study the tombs in St. 
Germain des Pres, of St. Denis, St. Etienne du Mont : and 
then we may go on to the tomb that all Englishmen visit 
— the tomb which I always feel to be the grandest of all 
sepulchral conceptions (to be set beside the tomb of Theod- 
oric at Ravenna, and the tomb of Cecilia Metella on the 
Appian way), almost the one work of modern art, which is 
at once colossal, noble, and pathetic — I mean the mighty 
vault beneath the dome of the Invalides, where the great- 
est soldier and the worst ruler of our age sleeps at last in 
peace, guarded by the veterans of France. 

We need not deny to modern Paris the gift of charm ; 
we may admit that her museums and libraries, her collec- 
tions, and her treasures are inexhaustible to the fit stu- 
dent ; but far more impressive is the history of this 
memorable city, with its vast range of time, of variety, of 



394 



THE CITY IN HISTORY. 



association — with its record of the dawn of Western civ- 
ilisation, of Catholicism and Feudalism, of the Renascence, 
and the modern world, of the Revolution of the last cen- 
tury, and the Imperialism of this century — with its dust 
enriched with the bones of those who in things of the soul 
and in things of war, in the love of beauty, and in the 
passion for new life, have dared and done memorable 
deeds, from the days of Genevieve and Clotilda, the Louis 
and the Henrys, down to the two Napoleons, and the three 
Republics. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE TRANSFORMATION OF PARIS. 1 

No city of the Old World has undergone changes so 
enormous within the last hundred years as the city of 
Paris. To contrast its condition down to the year 1789 
with its condition to-day is to measure the civilisation of 
old Europe by the civilisation of the Europe we see. Paris 
in 1789 was a perfect type of the feudal, monarchic, obso- 
lete system of privilege; the Paris of 1889 is the most 
republican, the most modern, the most symmetrical and 
complete of the cities of Europe. The hundred years 
have witnessed there a reorganisation of social life more 
rapid and profound than any other which Europe has 
known. 

If the millions who throng the boulevards, and the 
Places, the Champ de Mars, and the Esplanade of the Inva- 
lides could but roll back the veil of time, could see that 
city as it stood in the closing years of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, they would behold a city which in all essential things 
was a fortress of the Middle Ages, adorned with some vast 
palaces and churches of the Grand Monarque — a city, in 
the main, such as Rome was until the Italian kingdom had 
entered and transformed it. They would see the life of the 
seventeenth century, in most material points, unaltered — 
nay, traces of the life of the sixteenth, the fifteenth, and 
even of the fourteenth century. 

The vast, gloomy, and decayed remains of the old city 

1 The North American Review, Sept. 1889, vol. 149. 
395 



396 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

still cumbered the lines of so many gay and open boule- 
vards. Where there are now some twenty bridges across 
the Seine, there were then but six or seven ; and on some 
of these could still be seen the houses and buildings which 
made the bridges of old Europe crowded alleys. There 
were few open spaces at all except in front of the Hotel de 
Ville and at the end of the garden of the Tuileries. The 
old city of Richelieu and Mazarin — the city (to speak 
roughly) that lay between the Pantheon and the gate of 
St. Denis, and between the Tuileries and the Bastille — 
existed still, and much in the condition in which Riche- 
lieu and Mazarin had known it, — crowded with narrow, 
crooked, picturesque streets, unpaved, uncleaned, ill- 
lighted, with Gothic portals and towers here and there ; 
crowded round with houses, halls, and mansions. The 
island, or old Cite, in particular, was a dense tangle of 
streets, churches, and religious edifices. From north to 
south there ran several ancient and a few recent thorough- 
fares ; but from east to west he who wished to pass from 
the Bastille to the Louvre would make his way through a 
network of tortuous lanes, where the direct route was con- 
tinually interrupted by huge palaces, mediaeval fortresses, 
or conventual enclosures. 

Four great castles of feudal times still frowned over the 
city and bore the banner of the Old Monarchy — the Chd- 
telet, the Bastille, the Temple, and the Conciergerie. Of 
these not a vestige remains except the restored simulac- 
rum of the last. In the midst of this jumble of close and 
mediaeval streets there were scattered many sumptuous 
Palladian palaces of royal, princely, or ducal founders, 
with fore-courts, colonnades, terraces, and enclosed gar- 
dens, stretching over acres, and dominating entire quarters 
in defiant, lavish, insolent pride. Here and there still 
towered above the modern streets a huo'e remnant of some 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF PARIS. 397 

castle of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, such as we 
may see to this day in Florence, Verona, or Rome. 

And, besides these castles and palaces, the closely- 
packed streets were even more thickly strewn with 
churches, convents, and abbeys. Notre Dame, St. Eus- 
tacJie, St. Germain, V Auxerrois, the Hotel de Ville, the 
Louvre, the Palais Royal, and the Palais de Justice were 
hemmed in with a labyrinth of old and entangled streets. 
Buildings, alleys, and even churches separated the Louvre 
from the Tuileries, Notre Dame from the Palais de Jus- 
tice, cut off Notre Dame and the Hotel de Ville from the 
river, stood between Palais Royal and Louvre, and be- 
tween the Pantheon and the garden of the Luxembourg. 
Where the graceful fountain of Victory now brightens 
one of the gayest spots in Paris, Place die Chdtelet, bor- 
dered with two immense theatres, colonnades, gardens, 
and trees, there were then the decayed remnant of the 
great royal fortress and a network of crooked and un- 
sightly lanes. 

Besides the churches, chapels, hospitals, palaces, and 
castles, there also stood within the circuit of the city 
more than two hundred religious houses for both sexes ; 
abbeys, convents, nunneries, and fraternities ; peopled 
with thousands of men and women, leading separate lives, 
under different vows, owning obedience to far-distant 
superiors, and possessing various immunities. The vast 
areas occupied by the abbeys of St. Germain, of St. 
Martin, of St. Victor, by the houses of the Bernardins, 
and the Celestins, and the Quinze- Vingts, were a sensible 
portion of the whole area within the walls. From the then 
new Place Louis XV. to the Bastille, from ihe Luxembourg 
garden to the Port St. Denis, Paris was a great fortified 
city of the Middle Ages, crammed with thousands of 
sacred buildings, Catholic and feudal institutions, and 



398 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

thickly studded with Italian palaces, colleges, hospitals, 
and offices in the proud and lavish style of Louis xiv. 
Poverty, squalor, uncleanness, and vice jostled the mag- 
nificence of Princes and the mouldering creations of the 
ages of Faith. 

The difference between the Paris of 1789 and the Paris 
of 1889 is enormous ; but it is very far from true that the 
whole difference is gain. Much has been gained in con- 
venience, health, brilliance : much has been lost in beauty, 
variety, and historical tradition. To the uncultured vo- 
tary of amusement the whole of the change represents 
progress : to the artist, the antiquarian, and the senti- 
mentalist it represents havoc, waste, and bad taste. It 
would be well if the tens of thousands who delight in the 
boulevards, gardens, and sunny bridges of to-day would 
now and then cast a thought upon the priceless works 
of art, the historical remains, and the picturesque charm 
which the new Paris has swept away. Churches and 
towers, encrusted sculptures of the thirteenth, fourteenth, 
and fifteenth centuries, rare, inimitable, irrecoverable won- 
ders of skill and feeling, have been swallowed up whole- 
sale in the modern ' improvements.' Sixteen churches 
have disappeared from the Cite alone : four of them and 
ten streets have been carted away to make the site of a 
single hospital. Where is the abbey of St. Victor, of St. 
Germain, of Ste. Genevieve, and the Cour des Comptes, and 
the churches of St. Andre, St. Jacques de la Boucherie, 
Saints Innocents, St. Jean, and St. Paid f Where are the 
turrets of Saint Louis, and Etienne Marcel, and Philip 
the Fair? Where are the quaint passages and fantastic 
gables preserved for us only by Silvestre, Perelle, Meryon, 
Gavarni, Martial, and Gustave Dore ? 

It would be idle to regret the inevitable — more espe- 
cially when the inevitable means the rebuilding and 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF PARIS. 399 

laying-out of the most brilliant, most spacious, most sym- 
metrical of modern cities. For us it is enough that, down 
to the Revolution of 1789, Paris was an intensely old- 
world city ; and that to-day it is the type of the modern 
city. In the eighteenth century London had lost every 
trace of the fortress, of the feudal city, of subservience to 
king, aristocracy, or church. It had neither ramparts, nor 
traces of rampart, nor convents, nor proud palaces, nor 
royal castles in its midst. The Reformation had swept 
away the monasteries, the aristocracy were more than half 
bourgeois (at least whilst they lived in London), and the 
King was a popular country squire, who, in things essen- 
tial, was governed by a Liberal Parliament. The Tower 
was a popular show ; the Mayor and Corporation were a 
powerful, free, and public-spirited body ; the capital was 
being extended and beautified in the interest of those who 
lived in it ; and, in all its main lines, the city of London was 
much what it is to-day. It was about one-third more popu- 
lous than Paris, better paved, better lit, with a better sup- 
ply of water and means of communication, and with a far 
superior system of administration. It was practically a 
modern city, even then : it was the current type of the 
modern city, and was regarded by all as a far more agree- 
able, more civilised, more splendid city than Paris. It was 
natural enough that, when the liberal nobles and wits of 
France began to visit England (as in the eighteenth cen- 
tury they universally did), an Anglo-mania resulted — 
which was one of the main causes of the Revolution. 

Some of the great ornaments of Paris existed complete 
in 1789, but they were encumbered with narrow streets 
and cut off from each other. The Louvre, the Tuileries, 
the Palais Royal existed much as we have seen them, but 
they were all divided from each other by blocks of build- 
ings and intricate lanes. The Palais de Justice, the re- 



400 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

mains of the palace of St. Louis, and Notre Dame were 
there, but were blocked up by modern buildings. Por- 
tions of the Luxembourg and of the Hotel de Ville were 
standing. The Invalides, the Ecole Militaire, stood as 
we know them ; the Place de la Concorde (then Place 
de Louis XV.) was already laid out, and the two great 
offices flanking the Rue Royale were already built. 

On the other hand, the bridge now called de la Concorde 
was not open, nor did it abut on the Hall of the Corps 
Legislatif ; there was no Arc de V Etoile, no Madeleine, no 
Column of Vendome, no Place de V Opera, du Chdtelet, or 
de la Bastille. The Place du Carrousel was blocked by 
buildings, and the Rue de Rivoli, the Rue de la Paix, did 
not exist. The Pantheon was not quite finished ; the 
Louvre was not continued on the northern side ; the site 
of the Halles was a network of streets ; cemeteries and 
charnel-houses existed within the city ; the quays were 
irregular and rude structures ; the bridges were pictur- 
esque edifices of four or five different centuries, and only 
one-third of their present number ; there were no pave- 
ments for foot-passengers, no cleansing of the streets, 
whilst open sewers met one at every turn. Paris in 1789 
was much what Rome was in i860 — a huge, ancient, for- 
tified city, filled with dense, squalid, populous districts, 
interspersed with vast open tracts in the hands of power- 
ful nobles or great monasteries, and the whole perpetually 
dominated by a bigoted, selfish, and indifferent absolutism. 

The population of Paris in 1789, according to the latest 
and best authorities, was about 640,000 : in 1889 it is 
2,240,000. It has thus increased exactly three and one- 
half times. There is nothing abnormal in this. London 
in the same time has grown quite fourfold, and a similar 
rate of increase has been seen in Berlin, Vienna, St. 
Petersburg, Lyons, Marseilles, and Rouen. The increase 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF PARIS. 4OI 

of many English centres of industry, and of nearly all the 
American, has been vastly greater and more rapid. Still, 
the increase of Paris, within a hundred years, of three or 
four times in population and five or six times in area, is a 
sufficiently striking fact. In 1789 there were about one 
thousand streets : there are now about four thousand. 
There were fifteen boulevards : there are now more than 
one hundred. The Invalides, the Luxembourg, the Bas- 
tille, the line of the inner boulevards, and the Place Ven- 
dome then marked the utmost limits of regular habitations ; 
and thence the open country began. There were within 
the barriers immense spaces, gardens, and parks ; but they 
were closed to the public. Paris which is now covered 
with gardens, parks, plantations, and open spaces was in 
1789 singularly bare of any. The Jar -din des Plantes, the 
Jardin des Ticileries, were royal possessions ; the Champs 
Elysees and the Palais Royal were favourite walks. But 
these were almost the only accessible promenades. Of 
some forty places of importance which Paris now possesses, 
few existed in 1789, except the Place de la Concorde, the 
Esplanade of the Invalides, the CJiamp de Mars, the Place 
Vendome, and the Place Roy ale (now des Vosges). Within 
the circuit of the older city there was hardly a clear space, 
a plantation, a parterre, or a free walk, except in the Par- 
vis de Notre Dame, the Marche des Innocejits, and the 
Place de la Greve. From the Louvre to the Hotel de Ville 
there lay a labyrinth of dark and tortuous lanes, such as 
we may still see in the Ghetto of Rome or round about the 
Canongate at Edinburgh. 

The change that has taken place is that of a dream, 
or a transformation in a theatre. The Revolution came, 
the Convention, the first Empire, the Orleans monarchy, 
and the third Empire — and all is new. Streets only too 
symmetrical, straight, and long ; open spaces at the junc- 
2C 



402 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

lion of all the principal streets, boulevards, avenues, gar- 
dens, fountains, have sprung by magic into the places so 
lately covered with labyrinthine alleys. As we stand to- 
day in the Place du Carrousel, in the Place de V Opera, du 
Theatre Francais, du Chdtelet, de la Bastille, des Innocents, 
St. Michel, St. Germain, Notre Dame, or de V Hotel de 
Ville, each radiant with imposing buildings, stately ave- 
nues, monuments, fountains, columns, and colonnades, with 
everything that modern architecture can devise of spacious, 
airy, and gay, it is hard indeed to understand how in so 
few years (and much of it within the memory of men still 
living) all this has been created over the ruins of the 
dense, dark, intricate streets of the last century, where 
lanes still followed the ramparts of Louis the Stout and 
Philip Augustus, where the remnants existed of chateaux 
built by mediaeval seigneurs, or during the civil wars of 
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 

The clearance has been most cruel of all in the old Cite, 
the original Paris of the earliest ages. Down to the Revo- 
lution it had a population of about 20,000, which has now 
almost wholly disappeared, along with the sixteen churches, 
the oratories, and streets. The ancient island — Lutetia — 
is now occupied almost solely by six enormous public 
buildings ; and the spot, which for eighteen centuries has 
been busy with the hum of a city life of intense activity 
and movement, is now covered only by a lonely but 
glorious cathedral, an enormous hospital, a huge barrack, 
courts, offices, and official buildings. The oldest bit of 
Paris, the oldest bit of city in all Northern Europe, now 
looks for the most part like a new quarter laid out on 
some vacant space. Notre Dame, the Sainte Chapelle, the 
Conciergerie, have been restored and furbished up till they 
almost might pass for modern buildings. The barrack, 
the hospital, the geometric streets, the open square, might 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF PARIS. 4O3 

do credit to Chicago. It is all very fine, imposing, spa- 
cious, and new. But a groan may be forgiven to those 
who can remember the mystic portals of Notre Dame with 
the gallery of the kings, surrounded with houses which 
seemed to lean upon the mother-church for comfort and 
support, before the restorer had worked his will upon the 
crumbling, dark, pathetic fragments of carving, whilst the 
noblest facade ever raised by northern Gothic builders 
still looked like a great mediaeval church, and not like an 
objet d'art to be gazed at in a museum. 

This transformation, the most astounding that Europe 
can show, fills us ever anew with a profound sense of the 
power which for a century has animated the municipal 
government of Paris ; of the energy, wealth, industrial 
skill, artistic imagination, and scientific accomplishments 
which have gone to the making of it. To plough miles 
and miles of broad new boulevards through the most 
crowded lines of an ancient, populous, and busy city ; to 
transform a network of Ghettos into a splendid series of 
avenues, squares, and gardens ; to eviscerate the heart of 
a great capital, and to create symmetry, sunniness, con- 
venience, gaiety, and variety out of inveterate confusion, 
gloom, discomfort, and squalor — this impresses the mind 
with the visible signs of imperial might in the ruler, and 
inexhaustible versatility and adaptability in the governed. 

It is a different thing when a Frederick plans a new 
city in Berlin, or when a Republic creates itself a capital 
in Washington. But in Paris the capital existed ; with 
eighteen centuries of history, with monarchic, feudal, 
ecclesiastical, municipal institutions by the thousand, 
rooted for ages in the soil, and buttressed bv long epochs 
of prescription, privilege, law, and superstition. Not for 
an hour has the capital ceased to be the living heart of 
France ; not for a day has its own activity been inter- 



404 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

rupted, or the lives of some million or so of citizens been 
broken. Republic, Consulate, Empire, Monarchy, have 
succeeded each other in turn. Revolutions, sieges, massa- 
cres, anarchy, tyranny, parliaments, dictators, and com- 
munes have in turn had their seat in Paris, and have 
occupied her streets, buildings, and monuments. But 
under all, the transformation of old Paris into new Paris 
has gone on. Bastille, Chatelet, Temple, Tuileries, have 
been swept away : enormous boulevards and avenues have 
torn their huge gaps like cannon-shot through ancient 
quarters : abbeys, churches, palaces, hospitals, convents, 
gardens, halls, and theatres have disappeared like unsub- 
stantial visions, and have left not a rack behind. As the 
vacant spaces are cleared, new streets, theatres, halls, and 
squares spring up. A thousand new fancies and hundreds 
of new monuments take their place with inexhaustible in- 
vention. The city grows more populous, more rich, more 
brilliant year by year. The busy life which is silenced in 
the Cite, or by the new boulevards, avenues, and places, 
bursts forth with a louder din elsewhere. Every creation 
of artistic imagination, every invention of science, is in- 
stantly brought into service and adapted to modern life. 
And with all this whirl of change and action, Paris remains 
in its essence an ancient, and not a modern, city ; a very 
ancient city to him who knows its history, and can recall 
the memorials of its past. To this day, such an one can 
retrace her successive circuits, her ramparts and barriers 
of successive dynasties ; he can track out the spots made 
memorable by Julian, by Clovis, by Philip Augustus, by 
Francis i. and Henry iv., by Abailard, and Heloi'se, and 
Jeanne d'Arc, by Dante, by Descartes, by Corneille. 
Some two hundred streets still bear the names of saints, 
each recalling some convent of the Merovingian, Carlo- 
vingian, or Capetian dynasty, some one of the thousands 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF PARIS. 



405 



of churches, chapels, oratories, and religious houses which 
once filled Paris. To the historical mind, the St. Ger- 
mains, the St. Thomases, the St. Andres, the St. Martins, 
the St. Victors, the St. Bernards, which we read inscribed 
at the street corner, recall a series of local memorials 
which reach back for a thousand years. Here St. Louis 
stood and prayed ; here the Grand Master of the Templars 
was burned ; here Jeanne d'Arc fell desperately wounded ; 
here Moliere died ; here Corneille lived ; here Coligny was 
murdered, here Henry iv. was stabbed ; here Voltaire died, 
and here Camille Desmoulins opened the Revolution. 

Here, as everywhere in human life, we must take the 
evil with the good. It is idle, peevish, retrograde, to rail 
at the inevitable, or to cry out for the past. There has 
been awful, wanton, brutal destruction ; there have been 
corruption and plunder ; there has been vile art, making 
itself the pandar to folly and lust ; there have been cruel 
disregard of the poor and inhuman orgies of wealth and 
power, in all this series of transformation scenes which 
Paris has seen. No man can again recall to us the exquisite 
fancies carved on stone and on jewelled windows of the 
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Perhaps it was better 
to cart them away than to furbish them anew with gewgaw 
restorations. But modern life in a vast city could not 
endure this plethora of obsolete churches and useless con- 
vents in its midst, and the friars, black, white, and grey, 
had to go with all their belongings. Dark alleys are deli- 
cious in etchings ; but they are the nests of disease, vice, 
and death. A city of two millions cannot breathe within 
the winding lanes which sufficed the burghers of the four- 
teenth century within their gloomy ramparts. Haussmann 
and his myrmidons may have amassed fortunes ; but the 
world is still searching, lantern in hand like Diogenes, for 
a wise, just, incorruptible municipal authority. The art 



406 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

which has created modern Paris is not high art, is not true 
art, is in many ways most meretricious art ; and in its chef 
d'oeuvre, the new Opera, it has reached the pinnacle of 
vulgar display. But, take it all and all, Paris can show us 
the brightest, most inventive, and least mesquin street 
architecture which the nineteenth century can achieve, 
and certainly the most imperial civic organisation which 
Europe can produce. 

There is much to be said on all sides of this complex 
problem ; the catholic, the legitimist, the republican, the 
antiquarian, the artist, the poet, the socialist, the econo- 
mist, even the tourist, may be listened to with sympathy 
in turn. Let us gnash our teeth at the tale told us by the 
student of old art ; let us drop a tear over the wail of the 
dispossessed orders ; let us linger over every fragment of 
the past which the historian can point out as spared in the 
havoc ; let us listen to the story of the dispossessed work- 
man ; let us study the statistics of the old and the new 
city; let us stroll with Xhzjl&neur on the boulevards; but 
let us not say that it is either altogether evil or altogether 
good. Modern Paris is the creation of the Revolution of 
1789, and, like most of the creations of that mighty and 
pregnant epoch, it has the soul of good in things evil ; 
deplorable waste and error in the midst of inevitable and 
indispensable reform. 

A city is made to live in. Now, a serious defect in old 
Paris was that it was a city in which men died. Down to 
the Revolution of 1789, the annual deaths exceeded the 
annual births. Since the Revolution the births exceed the 
deaths. The birth-rate in Paris is low, and the death-rate 
is high, as compared with that of London and English 
towns to-day ; but the birth-rate of Paris is now much in 
excess of the death-rate. The total deaths in modern 
Paris are but double the actual deaths in 1789, though the 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF PARIS. 407 

population is now nearly four times as great. The death- 
rate of old Paris was far higher than that of any actual 
city of Western Europe, and for a parallel to it we must 
now go to the cities of the East. The death-rate of Paris 
is still high, for it is largely increased by the almost 
deliberate destruction of infant life. But before the Revo- 
lution, we must take it that some three or four thousand 
lives were annually sacrificed to insanitary conditions. The 
sanitary condition of Paris in the middle of the last cen- 
tury was, indeed, that of Cairo or Constantinople. Drinking- 
water taken direct from the Seine, open sewers, cemeteries, 
and charnel-houses in the heart of the city, infected and 
squalid lanes, dirt, decay, and disorder made life precarious, 
and scattered disease wholesale. The marvel is that pesti- 
lence was ever absent. 

This was no accident ; nor was it due to apathy or igno- 
rance in the people of Paris. It was a direct result of the 
Old Regime — the deliberate act of the Monarchy, the 
Church, and the Nobility. Its causes were political. Paris 
presented in herself an epitome of all the vices, follies, 
inhumanities, and solecisms of the Old System. Every- 
thing official was effete, barbarous, injurious to modern 
civilisation ; all that prerogative, privilege, superstition, 
and caste could do to crush a great capital, was done. No 
consideration of the health, comfort, or needs of the great 
city affected Louis xiv. or Louis xv. They and their courts 
lived at Versailles, given up to ambition, display, or vice. 
Paris and the Parisians existed to produce fine things, to 
give splendour to the monarchy, society to the nobility, fat 
benefices to the church. The meanest fraternity of friars, 
the most scandalous abbe, the most rapacious courtier, was 
of more account than the corporate officials of Paris. 
Vested interests, sacred foundations, privileged rights, 
blocked every path to reform and progress. The king's 



4<d8 the city in history. 

palaces, the king's fortresses, the king's institutions were 
inviolable, sacred, immutable. An obsolete foundation of 
bygone superstition was the cause of God. And the ca- 
price of a great noble was a high matter of state. 

Old Paris consisted of dark and crooked lanes, because 
in the Middle Ages cities were so built. To build new 
streets, to plan fresh thoroughfares, would disturb some 
church, destroy some oratory, inconvenience some marquis, 
or displace some convent. To pave streets, to make sewers, 
to open spaces, to remove cemeteries, to supply pure water, 
and to obtain fresh air would cost money, would affect 
privileges, or invade some right. But the money of Pari- 
sians was required to pay the king's dues, not to improve 
Paris. All privileges were above the law, and as sacred as 
the Ark of the Covenant. ' Rights,' in the sense of privi- 
leges, came before law, before necessity, before humanity, 
decency, or public duty. The sains populi was the infima 
lex — the lowest and last consideration which authority 
recognised. Prescription and the will of an absolute des- 
pot — these were the sole standards of public convenience. 
And the result was that they made permanent and astound- 
ing accretions of public inconvenience. Something was 
done by Louis xiv. to add magnificence to the capital by 
some royal palaces, churches, and boulevards ; and early in 
the reign of Louis xv. the spirit of social improvement, which 
culminated in the States-General of 1789, began to make 
itself felt. A few improvements were made, new streets 
were built on the outskirts, the cemeteries were closed, 
and the water supply was reformed. From the middle of 
the century a series of efforts were made, and not the least 
by Turgot and by his father, the Provost. But before 
privilege and prerogative the best efforts failed. It needed 
a revolution to reform the city of Paris. And the Revolution 
not only reformed, but transformed it with a vengeance, 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF PARIS. 4O9 

The physical disorder of old Paris was merely the reflec- 
tion — indeed, but a pale reflection — of the social, politi- 
cal, moral disorder of the Old Regime. The organisation 
of the city was a chaos of competing authorities, a tangle 
of obsolete privileges, and a nest of scandalous abuses. 
Anomalous courts jostled and scrambled for jurisdiction ; 
ancient gilds and corporations blocked every reform ; 
atrocious injustice and inveterate corruption reigned high- 
handed in the name of king, noble, or church. A valuable 
work of great research appeared (June 1889), under the 
direction of an important commission of historians, which 
throws new light from public documents on the condition 
of Paris under the old system. 1 We may see in it an as- 
tounding picture of misrule. The Parlement, the Hotel de 
Ville, the CJidtelet, the Governor of Paris, the Governor of 
the Bastille, the Minister of Paris, the University, the 
trade-gilds, the church, the religious foundations, all claim 
privileges, jurisdictions, rights, immunities, which cross and 
re-cross each other in continual conflict. 

There was no real municipality, no true elective repre- 
sentation of the citizens. Certain officials, named by the 
Crown, professed to speak and to act in the name of the 
city. Civil and criminal justice was shared by various 
bodies under quite indefinite authority. The CJidtelet ab- 
sorbed in the seventeenth century no less than nineteen 
baronial jurisdictions ; but the Archbishopric and several 
abbeys retained their own distinct courts. The CJidtelet, 
the Hotel de Ville, the church, each divided Paris into dis- 
tinct sets of local subdivisions. Taxation, public works, 
justice, police, markets, public health, even hospitals and 
charities, were under the control of different authorities, 
with no defined limits. Interminable disputes between the 

1 L&tat de Paris en 1789. Etudes et Documents sur l'Ancien Regime a 
Paris. H. Monin. Paris. Jouast, etc., etc., 18S9. j 



4IO THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

different authorities ensued. Of the streets, one in ten was 
a cul-de-sac. Although the area of Paris is now six or seven 
times greater than it was before the Revolution, and though 
the population is nearly four times as great, there are little 
more than twice as many houses. There were 30,000 beg- 
gars in Paris. Down to 1779 the ancient foundation of 
St. Louis, the Quinze- Vingts, held an immense area be- 
tween the Louvre and the Palais Royal, blocking up both, 
as well as the Rue St. Honoredrnd the Rue Richelieu. This 
enclosure, which was a privileged asylum, contained a pop- 
ulation of from five to six thousand, not only licensed to 
beg, but bound to live by begging. It was not until 1786 
that the cemetery and charnel-house of the Saints Inno- 
cents was suppressed. It is hardly credible that little 
more than a hundred years have passed since, in the 
densest quarter of Paris, long colonnades of grinning skulls 
and festering burying-grounds were standing where now 
we have the lovely fountain of Lescot and Goujon, trans- 
formed indeed, and almost more lovely in its transforma- 
tion, in the centre of the bright and glowing square that 
recalls Verona or Genoa. 

The censorship of all writings - contrary to law, to the 
Catholic faith, to public morals, or judicial prerogative,' 
opened a wide door for arbitrary power. In the years 
immediately preceding the Revolution, the Parlement of 
Paris suppressed sixty-five works. One of these is con- 
demned as tending 'd soulever les esprits.' Another is 
condemned as a libel on Cagliostro ! Sunday labour, eat- 
ing meat in Lent, neglecting to dress the house-front on 
a religious procession, playing hazard, 'speaking so as to 
alarm the public,' are some of the grounds of a criminal 
sentence. The most revolting public executions were 
common in all parts of the city. As if to accustom all 
to the sight of cruel punishments, some fifty places are 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF PARIS. 41 1 

recorded as the scenes of these horrible public exposures. 
The sentence sets out the details of these executions in 
all their hideous particulars. Ledit so-and-so shall be 
taken to Notre Dame, where his hand shall be chopped 
off, then taken on a cart to another place, where he shall 
be broken alive on a wheel, and so left 'as long as it shall 
please God to prolong his life ' ; then his body shall be 
burned and the ashes scattered to the winds. A working- 
man, for stealing some linen, is condemned to be hung on 
a gibbet and strangled by the public executioner. It was 
not till 1780 that preliminary torture of an accused person 
was abolished : torture as part of the sentence was retained 
till the Revolution. The personal punishments included 
the pillory, branding, flogging, maiming, strangling, break- 
ing alive, and burning. This is how the ancient Mon- 
archy prepared the people for the guillotine. 

The Revolution has swept away all this, and new Paris 
has sprung to life out of the Revolution, like Athene from 
the head of the thunderer. Out of extreme confusion, 
symmetry ; out of ancient privilege, absolute democracy ; 
out of paralysis of rival authorities, intense concentration 
of authority ; out of squalor, splendour ; out of barbarism, 
the latest devices of civilisation. Yet, for all these changes, 
Paris is not Chicago or Washington ; it is no fine new city 
built on an open plain. Her nineteen centuries of history 
are still there; the gay boulevards stand on the founda- 
tion-stones of a thousand structures of the past ; the plac- 
ards on each omnibus recall the names of mighty centres 
of faith, wisdom, devotion, purity, love. The religious pas- 
sion, the civic ardour, the republican zeal, the wit, the 
science, the electric will, the social ideals, the devotion to 
' ideas — are all there as of old 






CHAPTER XV. 

THE TRANSFORMATION OF LONDON. 

I. London in 1887. 

A huge city like this of ours, with such boundless possi- 
bilities before it for good or for ill, on the one hand per- 
petually becoming more unmanageable and more exhausting 
to life, on the other hand, continually throwing up unex- 
pected signs of vitality and hope — such a city stands at 
the parting of the ways. It is already by far the most 
inorganic mass of habitations that ever cumbered the 
planet, and to the bulk of its population, though not to 
the fortunate minority, it is not very cheerful. And yet, 
even now it is the healthiest of all capitals ; and in certain 
aspects of a city one of the best ordered ; to a very few, 
one of the pleasantest. Which is to prevail in the future 
— the boundless evil or the boundless good ? 

Take the first, the darker side. Here is the hugest 
assemblage of buildings ever piled by men on one spot of 
earth. For three centuries one of the great fears of think- 
ing persons has been the enormous growth of London ; 
and yet, till about a hundred years ago, neither its popula- 
tion nor its area were what we should now call abnormal. 
But since the last hundred years it has advanced by leaps 
and bounds, increasing its population fourfold within this 
century and its area at least ten or fifteen fold. Even in 
our own lifetime the area of London has increased at least 
fivefold, and its population between two and three fold. 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF LONDON. 413 

So that now we have a continuous population of some 
4,000,000 packed in an area of more than one hundred 
square miles, with nearly 2000 miles of streets, measuring 
hardly anywhere less than ten or eleven miles in a straight 
line. 

Every year 70,000 souls, roughly speaking, are added by 
immigration and births ; every year more square miles are 
added to the area. Year by year some 20,000 immigrants 
press into this city : that is the population of a fair county 
town ; so that every ten years there is added to London 
by immigration alone a city as large as Bristol or Lisbon ; 
and by the entire series of causes, a new city as large 
as St. Petersburg or Vienna. And thus already, in this 
corner of the Thames, there is huddled together about 
one-sixth of the entire population of England. ' Where 
is it to stop ? ' we ask, as the tide of immigrants pours in, 
and great armies of builders are perpetually laying fresh 
acres of meadow under brick. 

Size and numbers are not necessarily bad things perse. 
But unhappily the size and numbers of London have alarm- 
ing consequences of their own. Great cities have to grow 
organically, with some kind of self-adaptation to their de- 
velopment. But the increase of London defies adaptation 
and adjustment. The 70,000 new souls a year arrive before 
London has time to consider what she can do with them. 
The bricks pour down in irregular heaps, almost as if, in 
some cataclysm or tornado, it were raining bricks out of 
heaven on the earth below. The huge pall of smoke gets 
denser and more sulphurous, stretching out, they say, some 
thirty miles into the country, till Berkshire, Bucks, Herts, 
and Kent are beginning to be polluted by its cloud. From 
Charing Cross or the Royal Exchange a mm has to walk 
some five or six miles before he can see the blessed 
meadows or breathe the country air. Few of us ever saw 



414 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

more than half of the city we live in, and some of us never 
saw nine-tenths of it. We all live more or less in soot and 
fog, in smoky, dusty, contaminated air, in which trees will 
no longer grow to full size, and the sulphurous vapour of 
which eats away the surface of stone. The beautiful river 
— our once silver Thames — is a turbid, muddy receptacle 
of refuse ; at times indescribably nasty and unwholesome. 
The water we drink at times comes perilously near to be 
injurious to health. Our burying-places, old and new, are 
a perpetual anxiety and danger. Our sewers pour forth 
5,500,000 tons of sewage per week, almost all of it waste- 
fully and dangerously discharged. An immense proportion 
of our working population are insufficiently housed, in 
cheerless, comfortless, and even unhealthy lodgings. Not 
a few of these are miserable dens or squalid cabins unfit 
for human dwelling-place. Every few years some epidemic 
breaks out which carries off its thousands. In some four- 
fifths of London the conditions of life are sadly depress- 
ing and sordid, with none of the advantages which city 
life affords. The amusements, such as they are, are often 
unworthy of us; the resources of health and recreation 
are too few ; whilst the dangers to life, to morality, to the 
intelligence, are very real and ever present. 

Is this monster city again to double and treble itself ? 
its water supply to get still more precarious and defective, 
are its dead still more to endanger the living, its dreari- 
ness to grow vaster, and its smoke even thicker ? It is a 
strange paradox that, whilst those who have the means 
are always seeking to get away from London, those who 
are destitute are perpetually pouring into London ; whilst 
it is the ambition of every well-to-do Londoner to retire to 
freedom in the country or in the suburbs, it is the instinct 
of every countryman in distress to find his way up to Lon- 
don. There are tens of thousands who prefer to loaf or 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF LONDON. 41 5 

starve in the streets rather than to work in comfort in the 
fields. Nearly one-third of the annual increase of London 
is due to immigration ; and the immigrants are in great 
measure both destitute and incapable. Is it that our agri- 
cultural system is sorely at fault ; that labour in the country 
is become so flat, stale, and unprofitable, with opportunities 
so wretched, hopes so few, and life so weary and sordid, 
that the countryman at all risks will crave the crowd, the 
glare, the excitement of the city, even though it offers an 
almost certain wretchedness and squalor? If this be so, 
if our civilisation has come to this, that the labourer finds 
the country intolerable, a complete resettlement of rural 
life is at hand. 

But we cannot attribute too much to this ; for this vast 
and rapid increase of great cities is a feature of modern 
civilisation. It is equally marked under despotic or demo- 
cratic governments, in monarchies and republics, with a 
peasant proprietary or a system of great domains, on both 
sides of the Atlantic, in every race, in both hemispheres, 
in Asia, Africa, and America, as well as in Europe. Paris, 
St. Petersburg, Berlin, Vienna, Rome, Brussels, New York, 
Lyons, Marseilles, Milan, Munich, Moscow, Turin, Bombay, 
and New Orleans have increased in fifty years more than 
London ; and Glasgow, Hamburg, Philadelphia, and Chicago 
increase at a far higher ratio. So the increase of London, 
tremendous as it is, has nothing exceptional about it but 
its enormous positive volume. The increase itself, and 
even the rate of increase, is at bottom the result of modern 
industrial life and modern mechanical resources. 

Of this vast problem, or wilderness of problems, it is 
enough to touch on one or two ; and those rather of the 
simpler and material sort. Take the singb one of water 
supply, a necessity of life, and the condition of health of 
4,000,000 of Englishmen. It is inadequate in quantity, 



416 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

inconvenient in supply, very various in quality, and ex- 
posed to one or two immense risks of pollution. We are 
at times drinking water that is minutely but sensibly in- 
fected with deposit. Though the recuperative energy of 
moving water usually restores it to a fairly wholesome 
condition, we all know that London is not quite safe from 
a catastrophe. A single epidemic might any summer 
make the water of London as deadly as the climate of 
Vera Cruz. Now, the death-rate of Vera Cruz in London 
would mean an extra mortality of nearly 200,000. The 
morbid infection of the Lea and the Upper Thames would 
in six months produce a pestilence as appalling as any in 
History. And yet for twenty years we have talked about 
a safe and adequate water supply. The supply of London 
per head is below that of most Continental cities, im- 
mensely below that of most American towns, and about a 
quarter of that of Rome. The house-cistern system is one 
of those survivals of barbarism which shame modern me- 
chanical contrivance. Its dangers, inconveniences, and 
nastiness are the text of every sanitary reformer. And 
still we live on with the lead cistern and the ball-cock, 
whilst our statesmen are debating about a railroad to 
Uganda and the delimitation of Siam. 

Turn from water to fire. Our means in London of 
dealing with fire are far below that of every wealthy city 
in the world, varying from one-third to one-tenth of the 
provision which the most advanced nations make. It is 
true that London as yet has escaped, owing to its modes 
of construction and of warming and its general habits. 
But a great conflagration in London is not impossible, 
and the means of dealing with it, if it ever came, are ludi- 
crously inadequate. London, with its boundless wealth 
and its interminable area, has a fire brigade not only rela- 
tively, but actually, less than those of Paris, Berlin, New 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF LONDON. 417 

York, St. Petersburg, and Hamburg. Either our friends 
on each side of the Atlantic are foolishly timid, or we in 
this matter are criminally negligent. 

London has swallowed up and holds festering in its 
midst scores and scores of graveyards which still are and 
long will be a danger to the living. Year by year the 
vast city expands, and is already reaching the more mod- 
ern cemeteries which it is about to engulf, adding further 
dangers and fresh poison. The terrible mortality in the 
larger town hospitals — often double that of small country 
infirmaries — tells its significant and cruel tale. The 
whole of our arrangements for mortuaries, interment, and 
the due check on contagion are utterly in the rear of our 
resources and our science. What a picture of a civilised 
community at the end of the nineteenth century ! A 
noble river turned into a huge open sewer, with its tide 
carrying millions of tons of refuse up and down under 
our eyes. Contagion scattered broadcast by carelessness, 
ignorance, greed. Our sewers perpetually discharging 
deadly gases into the rooms where our children and our 
young ones are asleep ; the air choked with vapours inju- 
rious to animal and even vegetable life ; hundreds of thou- 
sands of our workers housed in lodgings which are a 
standing source of corruption, misery, and disease. 

Let us turn now to the other side of the picture — 
what our great city might be, ought to be, will be — if we 
in this generation and the next can only be brought in 
time to know our duty, our urgent necessities and our 
imminent dangers. I am very far from thinking all this 
can be remedied by Act of Parliament, and like the carter 
in ^Esop's fable want to call upon the Hercules of West- 
minster. We are all so much bewildered and stunned by 
the whirl and scream of the parliamentary machine that if 
a man only says that such and such an improvement in 
2D 



41 8 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

our life ought to be accomplished, it is thought that 
he is asking for an Act of Parliament to carry out his 
end. It is a thing for society, for the rich, for the poor, 
for the thoughtful, for the energetic, for the clergy, for 
the municipalities, for the reformers, for the working men 
and the working women, for the people — for us ail to take 
up and to work on till we get it. And it may be said : 
it is idle to appeal to the public about the death-rate of 
cities, about sewers, and museums, and cemeteries, and 
sanitary homes and parks for the people, and play-grounds 
for the children, and baths and wash-houses, and good 
schools. No ! it is everything to have a true and sound 
notion of what we want or ought to have ; to have a 
right ideal of a human, healthful, and happy city. We 
can all do something, even the humblest of us, to get a 
decent, habitable roof over our heads ; to see that our 
children have water and milk to drink that is not poison- 
ing them ; we can all take decent precautions not to spread 
disease by neglect, folly, and ignorance. And we can all 
together make a real impression on those who have the 
wealth and the direction of society upon them, if we make 
them feel that you are no longer satisfied with rotting old 
tenements for homes, contaminated water to drink, and 
dismal, joyless miles of streets to live in, where the pure 
air of heaven is turned into a pall of smoke. We can tell 
those who have the wealth and the power that the lives, 
and the health, and the comfort of the great masses are 
the very first of all their duties ; that the contests of Radi- 
cals and Tories are of infinitely small importance com- 
pared with the lives of the people. If it be not true that 
Sanitas — Sanitas, omnia Sanitas — if health and comfort 
be not the greatest of all things — they are the most 
urgent of all things, the foundation of all things. 

It is quite true that the death-rate of London is remark- 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF LONDON. 419 

ably low, but it ought to be lower. The very fact that 
London has so nobly distinguished itself amongst all the 
capitals of Europe is proof that it can do much to save 
life. It has a vast deal more to do. One of our greatest 
authorities, Sir Spencer Wells, speaking in the face of 
Europe as representing the sanitary reformers of this 
country, gave it as his deliberate judgment that the death- 
rate of our great cities might be, and ought to be, reduced 
to at least 12 per thousand per annum — that is, a reduc- 
tion of nearly 10 per thousand, not far off half the deaths. 
There have been some weeks of recent years, when Lon- 
don approached within measurable distance of this great 
ideal. There are now some districts in the west inhabited 
by the rich where the death-rate is at times below even 
this limit. There is no sanitary authority which denies 
the possibility of reaching a death-rate of 12 per thou- 
sand. It would mean some 30,000 lives saved each year 
in London alone. 

And at what price is the great result attainable ? The 
cost of an African war, perhaps, ten years of engineering 
labour, absolutely wholesome water to drink, and plenty 
of it to wash in and to wash with, a rational and healthy 
drainage to carry off poison from our homes — sewer- 
gas and other abominations of civilisation in the stage 
of blunder would become as much things of the past as 
the leprosy. We should all have pure milk, clean houses, 
air with no sulphur fumes in it, open spaces, plenty of 
play-grounds, mortuaries on right principles, cemeteries 
wholly away from the living, and the bestowal of the 
dead no longer a danger to the living, systematic precau- 
tions against contagion, hospitals reconstructed on scien- 
tific methods. A little common sanitary knowledge would 
be made a matter of general education. There would be 
no exhausting hours of work, no starvation wages, no 



420 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

overcrowded, ill-ventilated, and dangerous factories, less 
drink, less brutal treatment of women and children, more 
civilisation, more real charity, more true religion. This is 
the price at which the death-rate may be reduced nearly 
one-half, and upwards of 30,000 lives a year saved which 
now perish by our folly, our neglect, and our crime. 

London has already, as compared with the Continent, 
an exceptionally low death-rate ; lower by 20, 30, even 
50 per cent., than some other capitals, lower than almost 
any large town in Europe, except a few of the ports in the 
Baltic, and actually one-half of the death-rate of some Rus- 
sian and many Eastern cities. The death-rate is a very 
complicated and treacherous field, and we know that Lon- 
don is the centre which attracts hundreds of thousands of 
youths and girls in the prime of life, who come here and 
are employed in service and in factories, unmarried and 
necessarily in average health. That undoubtedly reduces 
the death-rate ; but the same cause applies more or less 
in all great towns of Europe or America, and (except that 
London absorbs a larger number of domestic servants than 
either), it does not affect London more than it affects Paris 
and New York. 

It is quite true that merely to keep sickly children alive 
for a life of feebleness and disease is by no means an 
unmixed boon ; but it will take a good deal to convince us 
that a high death-rate is a sign of civilisation. We may 
take a low death-rate as the basis and beginning of a thriv- 
ing community. London has distinguished itself above all 
the great cities of Europe by its low death-rate. The very 
increase of population, which in some aspects is so alarm- 
ing, is not due to any exceptionally high birth-rate in Lon- 
don. Indeed, the birth-rate is far below the standard of 
the eastern half of Europe.; nay, it is below that of most 
cities in Europe, except the French and Italian towns. 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF LONDON. 421 

The increase is due to the immense interval between its 
moderate birth-rate and its very low death-rate. Whereas 
the deaths exceed the births in Naples and in St. Peters- 
burg, and the births are less than one in a thousand in 
excess of the deaths at Madrid, Buda-Pesth, and Rome, 
and the surplus of births in Paris and Lyons is less than 
two in a thousand, in London, where the birth-rate is 
below that of the majority of Continental cities, the sur- 
plus of births over deaths is thirteen and a half per thou- 
sand, or, say, about 50,000 souls a year. As compared 
with Naples or St. Petersburg, therefore, London saves 
some 50,000 human lives a year ; as compared with Ma- 
drid, Pesth, and Rome, it saves, say, 45,000 lives ; as com- 
pared with Paris and Lyons, it saves 40,000 lives. If it 
can do this, why cannot it do more ? Our sanitary authori- 
ties tell us that it can do more : that 30,000 lives a year 
are still sacrificed to our ignorance, our folly, and our 
crime. 

We may take in turn a few of the ways in which the 
lives of these 30,000 victims a year may be saved ; and, 
with their lives, the infinite sorrow, suffering, and loss 
which these 30,000 deaths involve. There is a book with 
a most happy title, the instructive record of a most useful 
life — I mean The Health of Nations, by the well-known 
reformer Sir B. Richardson. In that book Dr. Richard- 
son has collected the writings, described the schemes, 
and explained the work of his friend, Edwin Chadwick, the 
Nestor of sanitary reform, the Jeremy Bentham of the Vic- 
torian epoch, the pioneer and venerable chief of all health 
reformers. Edwin Chadwick, himself the philosophical 
executor and residuary legatee of old Jeremy Bentham as 
a social and practical reformer, in extreme and hale old 
age — he was born in the last century, in 1800 — was still 
in 1887 hearty and energetic in the cause to which he has 



422 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

devoted sixty years of his life — the great cause of the 
Health of Nations. The Health of Nations is quite as 
important as the Wealth of Nations. If the Health of 
Nations does not need the philosophical genius of Adam 
Smith, or the analytic genius of Jeremy Bentham, it needs 
a spirit of social devotedness quite as serious, and a prac- 
tical energy in the apostle quite as great. As Burke told 
us that John Howard had devoted himself to a ' circum- 
navigation of charity,' so Edwin Chad wick sixty years ago 
began a ' circumnavigation of sanitation,' and after all his 
voyages he has at length finally put into port. 

Of all problems, the most important is — water. We 
are drinking water that at times is contaminated with 
sewage, as well as with foul surface drainage, and that 
to a degree which under possible conditions may become 
deadly. I saw not long ago one of the large affluents of 
the Upper Thames poisoned by mineral refuse to a degree 
which suddenly killed the whole of the fish. This garbage 
— mineral poison, refuse, and decaying fish — we in Lon- 
don had to drink. It is true that such are the forces of 
nature that even mineral poison and stinking fish does not 
kill us always — in moderate doses. Were it not for the 
vis medicatrix natures in the matter of water, air, and soil, 
we should all be dead men some morning, the whole four 
millions of us together. This want of abundant pure water 
is one of the most crying wants of our age. There are two 
or three modes in which London can be supplied with 
wholesome water. Whether it is to come out of the chalk, 
whether it is to be collected out of several of the southern 
rivers at their head sources, whether it is to come by a vast 
aqueduct from Bala Lake, the West Midland hills, or from 
Ullswater, we need not discuss. But it has to come — 
pure, abundant, constant. Ultimately, I believe, there will 
be a main aqueduct down England from the lakes of 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF LONDON. 423 

Westmoreland, sending off branch mains to the greater 
Northern and Midland towns, and pouring into London a 
river like the Eamont at Penrith — an inexhaustible source 
of pure water, just as the Claudian or the Julian Aqueducts 
poured their rivers into Rome — Rome, the immortal type 
of all that a great city ought to have in the way of water 
supply. 

Let us away with all the nastiness and stupidities of cis- 
terns, with their dirt, poison, discomfort, and cost ; away 
with the ball-cock, and the bursting pipes, and all the 
abominations of bungling plumbers. A continuous water 
supply is a necessity of civilisation. But free water is as 
much a necessity of civilisation as pure water, or contin- 
uous water. Water, like the roadway, is a public not a 
private concern. Neither water, air, nor soil are manu- 
factures like bread, clothes, and gas. A man should be no 
more charged personally for water by a commercial com- 
pany than he should be charged a toll for walking over 
London Bridge, or taking the air in Hyde Park. It con- 
cerns the health of us all that no family should be stinted 
in their water supply, or even should stint themselves. 
Roadways, streets, bridges, parks, embankments, the free 
use of air and earth, ought to be secured us by public 
bodies, under public control, making no private profit, and 
having no private interest, and supported by common rates 
and taxes, and so ought the free use of water to be. 

Water we want unstinted and under absolute public 
control for cooking, cleaning, and washing in our homes, 
for cleansing the streets, for fire defence, for wash-houses 
and public baths, for adornment and recreation. And on 
every one of these grounds, for the same reason that it 
would be criminal to make Hyde Park a private company 
and let them charge a toll at the gates — on all these 
grounds we require Water to be a public and not a private 



424 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

interest, a common advantage of a civilised community, 
and not a commodity for shareholders to speculate with 
and to sell to the needy. 

Some day, I trust, we shall take in hand our rivers. 
We have already done much. There is a vast deal more 
to do. There is no positive reason why the Thames as it 
flows by Westminster Palace should not be as bright as 
when it reflects Hampton Court on its surface. Factories, 
works, drainage, refuse, will no longer, in secret and in 
defiance of Parliament, pollute its stream; the southern 
shores will be embanked like the northern ; and the sur- 
face drainage of this metropolitan area and its whole 
sewage will not be discharged pell-mell into a tidal river. 
Some day, I believe, our two or three millions of chimneys 
will no longer pour out their endless pall of sulphur and 
soot. No poisonous gas will ever enter a house ; for 
mechanical contrivances will suck down the products of 
refuse, instead of, as they now do, force them up into 
our homes. 

Nor need we doubt that we shall one day face the great 
problem of health which death presents to us, in the only 
way in which these vast modern cities can face it — by the 
system of cremation. All who have studied the facts of 
cremation well know how idle are the objections on the 
score of propriety, decency, solemnity, or the concealment 
of crime. They know that cremation alone affords the 
absolutely safe means of bestowing the 80,000 corpses 
which each year casts upon our sorrowing hands. The 
ordinary objections which we hear are but melancholy 
remnants of childish superstition. There are objections of 
weight which I recognise to the full ; all that repugnance 
which springs out of the hallowed memory of the buried 
remains, the local sanctity of the grave, and all its religious 
and beautiful associations. No one can respect these 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF LONDON. 425 

more than I do ; no one can more heartily wish to preserve 
them. But those who feel them have never made real to 
their minds all the noble associations and resources of urn 
burial — -one of the most ancient, beautiful, and religious 
of all modes of disposing of the dead. Cremation, in its 
present form, absolutely pure, effective, simple, and digni- 
fied as it is, destroys the remotest germs of deleterious 
power in the loved remains ; but it does not annihilate the 
remains altogether. The solid ashes remain far more pure 
and perfectly than in any ancient cremation the residuum 
of the body, purified seven times in the fire. These ashes 
are appropriately closed in an urn. They can be buried, if 
it so be thought best, in the grave, and then the grave will 
contain the body, not indeed putrescent in horrible decay, 
but in a little harmless dust in a case. Cremation need 
not at all affect the practice of interment. The grave may 
remain undisturbed ; the sacred earth may be there as 
now ; flowers, as now, will rise up and bloom over the 
ashes. We the survivors may come and stand beside the 
tombstone, and adorn it w 1 'th a wreath or a posy as now, 
and think over her and him who rest below. But though 
they rest there as truly as ever, it will not be in a long and 
lingering process of abomination, ghastly and dangerous 
to the living and dishonouring to the dead. The great 
and holy work of Nature, purifying the poor insensible 
remains which she had taken into her own bosom, will be 
done, not in a lingering and loathsome fashion, but with a 
swift and beautiful blaze of a modern scientific gas furnace 
which in a few hours will consume the limbs that have 
rested for ever, and will transmute them into a permanent 
and innocent dust. 

But it is in the name not only of the health of the living 
that we need cremation in great cities, but as the sole 
means left to us of preserving the sanctity of the tomb, the 



426 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

religio loci of the dead. Although interment may long 
hold its ground in open country, and even partially com- 
bined with cremation in cities, as in early Christian ages 
interment and cremation existed together, urn burial of the 
ashes left by cremation affords us surpassing facilities for 
art, poetry, sentiment, and devotion in our ultimate dis- 
posal of the dead. The sacred dust in its urn can be fitly 
placed in all sorts of places ; for it is absolutely innocuous, 
very moderate in bulk, and easily adapted to all kinds of 
uses. It may be placed in a covering tomb, or as the 
centre of a monumental construction. It may be placed 
in a church, in a cloister, in a cemetery, in a private chapel, 
even in a private room. Hence the receptacles of sacred 
ashes need not be — as now they must be or ought to be 
— at a wearisome distance from the vast city and the home 
of the survivors. We can again have our dead beside us, 
as they did in Roman times and in mediaeval times ; but 
now without risk or inconvenience. The ashes of the 
greater dead might rest even in small consecrated chapels 
in the very heart of the city, in our public places, or even 
in our parks and churches. But for the general dead there 
is that beautiful institution the cloister, or Campo Santo. 
Those who know the lovely Campo Santo at Pisa, or at 
Bologna, or at Genoa, even under a strict system of inter- 
ment, and will imagine what such a Campo Santo or cloister 
could be made when combined with the Roman system of 
the Columbaria, or cells for the funeral urns, can see what 
a vast range is opened to the preservation of the remains 
in ways full of beauty, piety, and solemnity. The cloisters 
where our dead lie need not be at any distance from our 
midst — they will be most glorious additions to our city 
monuments. The old, clammy, ghastly, unsightly, useless 
city churchyard will regain its uses and its beauty and 
lose all its dangers. The new, noisy, untidy, and far-away 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF LONDON. 427 

cemeteries will also be at an end. Beautiful cloisters 
round the old graveyards of our parish churches will be 
filled with chapels, oratories, monuments, Columbaria, and 
devices of every kind where the pure ashes of our dead will 
rest each in its own urn, and with its own record, to which 
we can come when we please to gaze, and to recall in 
memory with resignation, love, and outpouring of heart. 
Such seems to be for great cities the burial of the future. 

Nor can we doubt that our whole system of city dwelling 
must be reformed. Our method in England of separate 
houses for each family has great and precious advantages ; 
and those who know its blessings will be sore put to sacri- 
fice it. But sacrifice it we must at last in our great cities. 
As it is, it is in London for the most part the privilege of 
the rich and the comfortable. The enormous mass of our 
London workers live, as they are forced to live, in lodgings 
or tenements. The whole of the old, poisonous, crumbling 
houses of older London are doomed. And we must boldly 
face the necessity of rebuilding London some day for the 
masses in blocks. It is the plan universal on the Con- 
tinent. The enormous waste of space, the indefinite in- 
crease of toil, involved in our present London system, is 
alone conclusive as to our practice. If London were con- 
structed on the tenement plan of Paris or New York, 
London would save a third or a half of its unwieldy area. 
Again, it is impossible to secure adequate air, sanitary 
construction, sanitary appliances, cleanliness, convenience, 
and freedom, unless the homes of the workers be ulti- 
mately constructed on the collective system. Water, 
lighting, washing, drains, cleansing, provision for sickness, 
accident, death, and the like, and, above all, really scien- 
tific construction can only be obtained at low rents, on the 
collective or tenement system. We need not reduce them 
to the cheerless, huge, monotonous barracks which are 



428 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

now too often called 'model dwellings.' But we can con- 
ceive in the future the working homes of our great cities 
consisting of detached blocks of not less than five or six 
stories, each housing not less than twenty or thirty fami- 
lies, with common appliances for cooking, washing, bathing, 
exercising, playing, and reading, which would supplement, 
not supersede, the appliances of each apartment. And 
each such block should contain in itself some sort of recep- 
tacle, some kind of sick-house or infirmary, some spare 
rooms for the treatment of malignant diseases, and for the 
due disposal of the dead. 

We need not here discuss the government of London 
or the municipality for London. That is a political and 
parliamentary question, and we all must desire a central, 
real government for London, on the sole condition that 
it be a good government. But for the material resources 
of London we need local dispersion, decentralisation, and 
local organisation. We can have a government a long way 
off from us ; but we cannot have museums, libraries, baths, 
parks, play-grounds, schools, hospitals, and cemeteries a 
long way off from us and our homes. Or if we do they 
are of little use to us. Materially — though not govern- 
mentally — London needs to be treated departmentally, 
locally, and separately. We may see the signs of that 
movement on every side. There are the People's Palace, 
and the new libraries, the new town halls, the new schools, 
the parks, museums, the Toynbee Halls, which are spring- 
ing up everywhere. The great parliamentary reform of 
1885 which grouped London into sixty divisions is a step 
of immense importance. The parliamentary borough is 
about large enough for local purposes. Every parliamen- 
tary borough wants its own organisation for its museums, 
libraries, baths, parks, and play-grounds, and all the rest. 
The children's school must be within an easy walk. So 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF LONDON. 429 

must the men's reading-room, or lecture-hall, or library. 
The women must be able to find a good wash-house at the 
end of the street ; a man after his Sunday dinner must be 
able to take his family to get fresh air and rational recrea- 
tion without walking more than a mile for it. The children 
and young people must be able to get to their play-grounds, 
or their gymnasia, or their concert, or dance, walk or talk, 
without being tired by the walk before they get there. 
For there is one thing certain, which is that all the tele- 
graphs, and railways, and all the inventions of modern 
science have not made human legs and feet able to go 
quicker or go farther than they used ; that even tramcars 
and underground railways are only a very partial substitute 
for legs ; and that until science invents seven-leagued 
boots, perfectly available for every man, woman, and child, 
and provided gratis at every house door, the appliances 
of civilised life must be within an easy walk of people's 
homes. 

To some such city, then, we may look in the future. A 
city where our noble river will flow so bright and clear 
that our young people can swim in it with pleasure as they 
do at Paris. A city where we shall again see the blessed 
sun in a clear blue sky, and watch the steeples and the 
towers as they do at Paris shining aloft in the bright air. 
A city which at night will be radiant with the electric 
light, in the midst of which fountains, as at Rome, will 
pour forth fresh rivers from the hills — a river in our case 
of perennial water that has fallen from Snowdon or Hel- 
vellyn. A city where all noxious refuse is absolutely un- 
known, where no deadly exhalations are pumped into our 
' homes, where a child can drink a glass of water from the 
tap or the street fountain and sleep in its garret at home 
L with entire impunity, a city where typhus and typhoid, 
( smallpox, zymotic disease, shall be as rare as the plague, 



430 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

and as much a matter of history as the leprosy. A city 
where the dead shall no longer be a terror to the living, no 
longer despatched unremembered to some distant burial- 
place, but kept in our midst — at once a source of reverent 
memory and of beautiful adornment. A city where pre- 
ventable disease is a crime to be charged against some 
one, and an opprobrium to the district in which it breaks 
out, like a murder or a burglary. A city where no child 
shall go untaught because it has no suitable school at 
hand. A city where no man should go without books, 
pictures, music, society, art, exercise, or religion, because 
there were no free libraries at hand, or no museums open 
when he was at leisure after work, no galleries to look at 
on a Sunday, no concerts, no parks, no play-grounds within 
reach, no free seats in a church which he cared to enter. 

II. London in 1894. 

The Local Government Act of 1888 has undoubtedly 
added a new impulse to that transformation of London, 
which historic causes of European range had made neces- 
sary for more than a generation, and which had been stim- 
ulated anew by the Parliamentary Redistribution Act of 
1885. With the political aspect of these Acts, and with 
the policy of the London County Council, we have no 
occasion to concern ourselves in these pages. But the 
effect of this great municipal reform on the evolution of 
London as a historic city is too momentous to be passed 
in silence. 

In the first place, London, which a generation ago was 
an inorganic mass of Parishes variously controlled by 
obscure Vestries, has been showing in the last decade 
unexpected tendencies towards organic unity and to evolve 
an internal organisation. The organic unity has been 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF LONDON. 43 1 

adjourned, in spite of heroic efforts on many sides, by the 
natural rivalries between the new Council and the historic 
Corporation, by differences between the two Houses of 
Parliament, and by the protracted crisis in the political 
world. Of all these causes (temporary as true patriots 
hope) nothing will be said here. In the meantime the 
spontaneous organisation of London into an aggregate of 
cities has been one of the most striking of modern move- 
ments. It has been greatly stimulated by the two political 
reforms which created 650,000 voters for London, and 
divided it into numerous boroughs. These have become 
real civic organisms of a manageable size ; and they have 
naturally developed a kind of local patriotism, such as was 
hardly possible to grow up in the vague welter of an un- 
known and unknowable ' Metropolis.' 

The ultimate destiny of this huge agglomeration of 
houses is now vested in the hands of the vast masses of 
the working population. They have far more keen inter- 
ests in the city than their wealthier neighbours, who look 
on London as a centre of labour, amusement, or struggle 
for a season or a period, whilst they often ' get away ' from 
it, and hope at last to retire to a calmer place. In the 
meantime, the richer classes seldom know London as a 
whole, or care for it as their home, or regard it as having 
any claim on them as their city. Far different is this to 
the working men : to whom London is their home, their 
* county,' their permanent abode. It is a city which they 
quit only for a few hours or days, which many of them 
are forced to traverse from end to end under the exigen- 
cies of their trade, where they expect to pass their old 
age and to lay their bones. The healthiness, convenience, 
pleasantness of London, are all in all to them and to their 
household. Mismanagement is to them, and to those dear 
1 to them, disease, discomfort, death. There is every reason 



432 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

to look forward to the complete transformation of London 
into an organic city, with a people proud of its grandeur 
and beauty, so soon as the new institutions have been 
fully matured. We have seen a local municipal patriotism 
break forth with extraordinary rapidity and energy in sev- 
eral of the new boroughs, such as Battersea, Chelsea, and 
St. George's-in-the-East. And this interest in city life will 
grow and deepen, as it has done in Midland and Northern 
towns, until ultimately we may look to see London as a 
whole develop the spirit of pride and attachment which the 
great cities of the Middle Ages bred in their citizens of old. 

The big collective problems which deal with Water, with 
Fire, with the Sick, with the Dead, with central Communi- 
cations, and with the Housing of the poor population — 
can only be undertaken by a supreme central municipality, 
but not by vestries, or boroughs. And unhappily in Lon- 
don no supreme municipality has as yet a free hand, or 
can count on the aid of the Legislature. But in spite of 
division of authority and legislative obstacles, not a little 
has been done and much more has been attempted and 
prepared in every one of these departments. It is fair to 
say that both the ancient Corporation and the County 
Council have striven to attain these ends ; and in not a 
few cases with combined energies and resources. And 
although in the case of the Water Supply no final solution 
has been reached, an immense amount of scientific study 
has been directed to the problem ; and a great improve- 
ment both in quantity and quality has been obtained. At 
the same time determined efforts and a large expenditure 
have visibly improved the condition of our great river; 
and fill us with hope that living men may yet come to see 
a pure and healthy Thames. 

The great problem of how to bring London up to the 
level of its position in the world and to make it a really 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF LONDON. 433 

noble and commodious city has been continually attacked : 
as yet with incomplete results and a better understanding 
of the difficulties which beset it. It is mainly a financial 
and political question. The greatest and richest city in 
the world is also the city which now seems to practise the 
most rigid economy in its own improvement. With the 
greatest river of any capital in Europe, with boundless 
energy, wealth, and opportunities, London is put to shame 
by Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Rome, and New York. London, 
it is true, has no mind to follow the monstrous extrava- 
gance which has imposed crushing burdens on so many 
Italian cities. But it will not even follow the honourable 
example of Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Birmingham, 
and Nottingham. The London Council is housed in hired 
makeshifts, and London communications are indefinitely 
adjourned. This, however, is entirely a financial and polit- 
ical question. With the existing system of finance and in 
the equilibrium of political parties, it has been the fixed 
resolve of the Council to throw no fresh burdens on the 
occupying ratepayer. 

Yet in spite of legislative obstacles, within five years the 
number of the public Parks, Open Spaces, and Play-grounds 
has been more than doubled, and their public usefulness 
immeasurably increased. The material, the stations, and 
the staff devoted to extinguish fires have been very largely 
augmented ; and further increase is contemplated ; so that 
the army required for fighting urban conflagrations may 
ere long be brought up to the level of modern civilisation. 
Great efforts are also being made to arrest infectious 
disease, to suppress nuisances, to prevent contamination 
of food, to condemn insanitary dwellings, to secure just 
weights and measures, and to re-house the people in com- ' 
fortable and healthy homes. When we consider how much 
has been done within the last few years to increase the 
2 E 



434 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

healthiness, the convenience, the pleasantness of London 
for the masses who inhabit it in permanence, there is 
ground to trust that the reorganisation of the great city- 
has begun. Even in the costly and difficult problem of 
trans-fluvial communications the work has been taken in 
hand. London presents in this matter more arduous prob- 
lems than any European capital. But the Tower Bridge, 
the Blackwall Tunnel, the steam-ferry, and the rebuilding 
of old bridges that is projected, will do something to meet 
this urgent want. 

The side wherein London still most visibly halts is in the 
street improvements and new communications so loudly 
demanded for years. This, however, is an operation enor- 
mously costly and beset with complex parliamentary diffi- 
culties. Until these are solved, and the conflict on the 
form and incidence of municipal taxation is decided, we 
cannot expect much to be done. But the question has 
already been stirred in all its forms ; and many schemes 
have been put before the public and parliament. London 
has many noble features, in its great river, its fine parks, 
its position astride of the Thames, and its northern heights 
gradually sloping down to the embankment. But it has 
vast arrears of work to make up before it can be counted 
a commodious or splendid city. There are large parts of 
London where crooked lanes and decayed houses remain 
almost as they were built after the fire of 1666. The 
urgent problem now is to secure better thoroughfares from 
north to south. Below Vauxhall Bridge not a single car- 
riage bridge has been added for two generations, whilst 
the population has increased threefold. The trans-fluvial 
communication, including the enlargement and rebuilding 
of existing bridges, and the approaches to these both north 
and south, needs at this hour to be at least doubled in 
number and carrying power. 



THE TRANSFORMATION OF LONDON. 435 

Amongst the larger problems still awaiting solution for 
the material improvement of London are : — 

1. The completion of the embankment of the river on 

both sides between Battersea and Blackfriars, with 
due provision for continual easy access to the 
embankment, and with docks at suitable stations 
within it. 

2. Improved access to the existing bridges, north and 

south. 

3. New carriage bridges, at least at Lambeth and at 

Charing Cross. 

4. A direct avenue connecting the three great northern 

railway termini with the Waterloo terminus and 
with Charing Cross. 

5. Connections of Holborn with the Strand, the British 

Museum with Somerset House, Victoria Terminus 
with South Kensington and Lambeth, Ludgate Hill 
with Cheapside. 

6. The reconstruction of Covent Garden and its ap- 

proaches and connection of it with the Courts of 
Justice and with the north. 

7. The reconstruction of the Main Drainage system, 

including the discharge of sewage to the sea. . 

8. The re-housing of the people displaced from decayed 

insanitary areas. 

The minor improvements in every outlying parish and 
suburb are far too many and complex to be treated here. 

These undertakings, together with a suitable building 
for the government of London to work in, may occupy the 
energy and resources of a whole generation. It is impos- 
sible to calculate the enormous loss in money, in comfort, 
in health, in labour, wasted by millions of people strug- 
gling to reach each other through crowded, narrow, and 



43^ THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

circuitous streets. Nor can we easily estimate the evils 
of pinching the government of a great capital by niggardly 
supply of the material appliances of its task. 

The first thing is to make our city a healthful home for 
the people. The next is to furnish it abundantly with all 
the resources of civic life — one of the primary of which 
is adequate means of transit. The third is to invest it 
with dignity, impressiveness, and beauty. The people who 
now have the destinies of their own city in their own 
hands will not long remain satisfied with squalor, ugliness, 
and discomfort. The civic patriotism of London has lain 
dormant for centuries, but in our generation it is reviving. 
And we may hope that ere the twentieth century is far 
advanced, it may create a new London worthy of its past 
history and its vast opportunities. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE SACREDNESS OF ANCIENT BUILDINGS. 1 

A torso from the hand of Pheidias, a portrait by Titian, 
a Mass by Palestrina or Bach, a lyrical poem of Milton, 
an abbey church of the thirteenth century — are all works 
of art ; matchless, priceless, sacred : such as man on this 
earth will never replace, nor ever again see. They are, 
each and all, that which are a great life, or a memorable 
deed : once spent, they can never be repeated in the same 
way again, and yet, once lived, or once achieved, they 
make the world to be for ever after a better place. And 
these inimitable works are not only amongst the heirlooms 
of mankind ; but they are records of the life of our 
fathers, which concentrate in a single page, canvas, block 
of stone, hymn, or it may be, portal, as much history as 
would fill a library of dull written annals. From the point 
of view of beauty, of knowledge, of reverence, these works 
of art are, as the historian of Athens said, 'an everlasting 
possession.' 

Yet how strangely different is the care with which we 
treat the statue, the picture, the music, the poem, from the 
treatment we give the church — the church, one would 
think the most sacred of all. It is not so with us. We 
preserve the torso, or the portrait — we restore the church. 
We give it a new inside and a fresh outside. We deck it 
out in a brand-new suit to cover its nakedness. A com- 

1 An address given at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Preserva- 
tion of Ancient Buildings, 1887. Contemporary Review, vol. 52. 

437 



438 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

mittee of subscribers choose the style, the century, into 
which it shall be transposed ; they wrangle in meetings, in 
rasping letters, and corrosive pamphlets, as to carrying on 
an early-pointed arcade in the lady-chapel, or as to intro- 
ducing a gridiron mass of perpendicular tracery in the 
west window. The chapter, the subscribers, the amateur 
archaeologists, each have their pet style, sub-style, and 
epoch, their fancy architect, or infallible authority in stone, 
antiquities, and taste. Between them the church is gutted, 
scraped, refaced, translated into one of those brand-new, 
intensely mediaeval, machine-made, and engine-turned fab- 
rics, which the pupils of the great man of the day turn 
out by the score. This is how we treat the church. 

Imagine the tenth part of this outrage applied to statue, 
picture, hymn, or poem. Suppose the Trustees of the 
British Museum were to call in Mr. Gilbert and commis- 
sion him to restore the Parthenon torsos, to bring the 
fragments from the Mausoleum up to the style of the 
Periclean era. Suppose the Ministry of Fine Arts in 
France restored the arms of the Melian Aphrodite in the 
Louvre, or the Pope restored the legs, arms, and head to 
the torso beloved by Buonarroti. Europe, in either case, 
would ring with indignation and horror. Time was, no 
doubt, when these things were done, and done by clever 
sculptors in better ages of art than ours. But we may be 
fairly sure that it will never be done again. 

Pictures, we know, have been restored ; and, perhaps, 
on the sly are restored still. Years ago I saw a mis- 
creant painting over the ' Peter Martyr ' of Titian in the 
Church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo ; and it would have been 
a condign punishment if the fire which consumed it had 
caught him red-handed in the act. They have daubed 
Leonardo's * Cenacolo ' till there is nothing but a shadow 
left. But though a sacrilegious brush may now and then 



THE SACREDNESS OF ANCIENT BUILDINGS. 439 

be raised against an ancient Master (just as murder, rape, 
and arson are not yet absolutely put down), even our great- 
great-grandfathers, who made the grand tour and 'collected' 
in the days of Horace Walpole, never added powder and a 
full wig to one of Titian's Doges, or asked Zoffany to finish 
a chalk study by Michael Angelo. 

I do not know that there ever was a time when people 
restored a poem or a piece of music. Certainly Colley 
Cibber restored some of Shakespeare's plays, introducing 
bon ton into 'Hamlet' and 'Richard in.' And Michael 
Costa would interpolate brass into Handel's ' Messiah.' 
But in any world that claims a title to art, taste, or cult- 
ure, to falsify a note or a word, either in music or in poem, 
is rank forgery and profanity — felony without benefit of 
clergy. Manuscripts are searched with microscopes and 
collated by photographs to secure the ipsissima verba of 
the author. And the editor who ' improved ' a single line 
of ' Lycidas ' would be drummed out of literature to the 
1 Rogue's March.' 

In our day, happily, poem, music, picture, and statue are 
preserved with a loving and religious care. Picture and 
statue are cased in glass and air-tight chambers ; for we 
would not beteem the winds of heaven visit their face too 
roughly. The rude public are kept at arms'-length ; and 
in some countries are not suffered so much as to look at 
the books, engravings, and paintings for which they have 
paid. Worship of an old poet is carried to the point of 
printing his compositions in the authentic but unintelli- 
gible cacography he used. And as to old music, reverence 
is carried so far that too often we do not perform it at all, 
I suppose for fear that a passage here and there may not 
be interpreted aright. 

Go to Sir Charles Newton or Mr. Murray, and tell him 
that the 'Theseus' and 'Ilissus' in the Elgin Room (I use 



44-0 



THE CITY IN HISTORY. 



the old conventional names) are sadly dilapidated on their 
surface, and that you could restore their skins to the orig- 
inal polish ; or propose to repaint the Panathenaic frieze 
in the undoubted colours used by Pheidias. Tell Sir 
Frederick Burton or Mr. Poynter that the lights in the 
' Lazarus ' and the ' Bacchus and Ariadne ' have plainly 
gone down ; and that you will carry out the ideas of Sebas- 
tian and Titian by heightening them a little. Tell him 
that 'Alexander and the Family of Darius'- is full of 
anachronisms, and that you will re-robe the figures with 
strict attention to chronology and archaeology. I should 
like to see the looks of these public servants when you 
proposed it, as I should like to have seen Michael Angelo 
watching the ' Breeches-maker ' who clothed the naked 
saints in his Sistine ' Last Judgment.' 

Statue, picture, book, music, are preserved intact with 
reverential awe. Not but what some of them have suffered 
too by time, get utterly dilapidated, are in risk of perish- 
ing, have become mere fragments, or offer tempting ground 
for ambitious genius. The ' Aphrodite ' of Melos is still 
a riddle : the torso of the Vatican is a very sphinx in stone, 
a mass of marble ever propounding enigmas, ever reject- 
ing solutions. It is a block as it stands : head, arms, legs, 
and action would make it a statue. The 'Cenacolo' of 
Milan has long been a mere ghost of a fresco, faint as the 
last gleam of a rainbow. There are still whole choruses 
of ^Eschylus to restore ; and Shakespeare is certainly not 
responsible for every scene in his so-called works. Liter- 
ature and Art are full of works, either injured by time, 
or left incomplete by their authors, or such as modern 
research could easily purge of their anachronisms, incon- 
sistencies, and general defects. 

It is in one art only that modern research dares this 
outrage. Great works of architecture are not exactly on 



THE SACREDNESS OF ANCIENT BUILDINGS. 44 1 

the same footing with great works of sculpture, of paint- 
ing, of music, of poetry. They differ from all ; and I will 
presently consider these differences. But great works of 
architecture are, like all great works of art, matchless, 
priceless, and sacred. They are absolutely beyond re- 
newal. It is easier to copy Titian's ' Entombment ' than 
the portal of Chartres or Notre Dame — as they once 
stood, and stand no more. Each great work of architect- 
ure is also unique: completely distinct from every work 
that ever was or ever will be. Giotto's Campanile, the 
Duke's Palace at Venice, stand alone — must we say stood 
alone? — like Hamlet or Lear, 'remote, sublime, and in- 
accessible.' A man who wanted to ' continue ' Giotto's 
Campanile, or add a new story, and enlarge the Palace at 
Venice, is the kind of man who would ' continue ' the Iliad 
or dramatise the Divine Comedy for the Lyceum stage. 

In all ways the great building is worthy of a deeper 
reverence, is consecrated with a profounder halo of social 
and historical mystery than any picture or any statue can 
be. Of the five great arts, that of building is the only one 
which adds to its charm of beauty the solemnity of the 
genius loci. It is the one art which is immovably fixed to 
place ; the rest are migratory or independent of space. 
Poetry and music, not being arts of form, are not confined 
to any spot. Statues and paintings, though they can only 
be seen in some spot, may be carried round the world and 
set up in museums and galleries. But the building belongs 
for ever to the place where it is set up. It is incorporated 
with the surroundings, the climate, the people, the site, 
where it first rose. No museum can ever hold it ; it is not 
to be catalogued, mounted, framed, or classed like a coin 
or a mummy in a glass case. It stands for ever facing the 
same eternal hills, the same ever-flowing river, rising into 
the same azure or lowering sky into which it rose at first 



442 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

in joy or pride. It may be as old as the Pyramids, or as 
recent as Queen Anne. But in any case it has watched 
generation after generation come and go; for thousands 
of years men have passed under that portal ; for centuries 
the bell has tolled from that tower. The steps of this 
colonnade have been worn by the feet of Pericles, Sopho- 
cles, Plato, and Socrates ; under this arch passed the An- 
tonines, Trajan, and Charlemagne ; Saint Louis used to 
pray standing on this very floor, six centuries and a half 
ago ; this chapter-house was for two centuries the cradle 
of the Mother of Parliaments throughout the world. 

No other art whatever, with the partial exception of 
large frescoes, 1 neither music nor poetry, has this religio 
loci, this consecration of some spot by hallowed associa- 
tion, which is bound up with the very life of every great 
building. In the whole range of art there is nothing so 
human, so social, so intense, as this spirit which has made 
the practice of pilgrimage an eternal instinct of humanity. 
To pass from the roar of Paris or London to sit beside the 
Venus or the Theseus is delight. We all feel rest and 
awe before a Madonna of Raphael, a portrait of Titian, or 
listening to Mozart's 'Requiem,' or to 'Paradise Lost' 
But to me, a son of earth, no art comes home, seeming at 
once so intense and so infinite, as when I wander round 
the old piazzas at Florence and Venice, or pace about 
the Forum or the Abbey. There art, memory, veneration, 
patriotism, the pathos, the endurance, the majesty of 
humanity, seem to me to blend in one overpowering sen- 
sation. Who can say where Art ends and Veneration 
begins ? 

Thus every ancient building, whether it be a successful 

1 Such frescoes as those of the Arena Chapel at Padua, or the Sistine Chapel 
at Rome, belong to architecture as much as to painting, almost as much as 
the frieze of the Parthenon is a part of the building. 



THE SACREDNESS OF ANCIENT BUILDINGS. 443 

work of art or not, is sacred by its associations, and is a 
standing record in itself. But an ancient building is a 
far more definite product of the society out of which it 
grew and the civilisation which created it, than any statue 
or any painting, almost more than any music, or any poem. 
It is usually a far less personal and individual act of 
imagination than statue, painting, poem, or music. It is 
a collective and developing work, the creation of a series 
of minds, the inspiration of a given epoch, and of a par- 
ticular people. No great statue, or painting, or piece of 
music, or poem, was ever produced by a group of artists. 
Most great buildings were. The Parthenon is in what is 
called the Doric not the Ionic style ; and we think of Phei- 
dias, the sculptor, rather than Ictinus, the architect, as the 
genius who created it. Hardly a single great church, till 
the age of Wren, can be positively assigned to one sole 
author, as we assign the ' Agamemnon ' positively to 
^Eschylus, or the Sistine Madonna to the stessa mano of 
Raphael. A few, a very few, buildings bear the stamp of 
one unique genius, such as the Campanile at Florence, the 
Sainte Chapelle, and our St. Paul's. Statues, paintings, 

.poems, and music are each the complete conception of 
one mind, the execution of one hand. As a rule, buildings 

1 are the accumulating conception of several minds, the 

1 execution of successive generations. 

It is no doubt this character in buildings which has 
made us slow to treat them with the reverence and love 
that we show so readily to works in the other arts. Other 

.works are the creations of some master whose name, story, 
and individuality we know. A Madonna is by Raphael or 

jBellini ; a poem is by Dante or Milton; a Mass is by Bach 
or Mozart ; a statue is by Pheidias or Michael Angelo. 

;And we cannot conceive any other hand or brain so much 
as touching the work. But the Church of the Holy Wis- 



444 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

dom at Constantinople is the work of the Byzantine 
School ; the Cathedral of Chartres is the work of builders 
in the Middle Ages; the Abbey, the Tower of London, 
the Louvre, the Duomo and the Palazzo Vecchio at Flor- 
ence, represent whole centuries of successive evolution in 
art and manners. Statues and paintings are the creations 
of single Masters. Buildings are the collective growth of 
Ages. * 

But for this very reason, what buildings lose in personal 
interest they gain in human interest, in social significance, 
in historical value. The multiplicity of parts in a great 
edifice, the vast range of its power over an infinite series 
of human souls, the sacrifices, the endurance, the concen- 
tration of efforts by which it was built up, and the count- 
less generations of men who have contributed to its 
beauty or have been touched by its majesty, give it a 
collective human glory, which no statue or picture ever 
had — a glory which is exceeded only by the great poems 
of the world. A Madonna was struck off in a few months, 
and since it was put on canvas has been seen by some tens 
of thousands, of whom some thousand came from it better 
men. A statue, a song, a lyric, appeals to a definite num- 
ber in a definite way, but hardly to a whole people on every 
side of their souls. But take a great building — a great 
group of buildings at its highest point — say the Acropolis 
at Athens, the Forum at old Rome, the Papal edifices 
at modern Rome, the Piazzas at Florence, Venice, and 
Verona, Notre Dame as it stood unrestored, our own great 
group at Westminster — in vast range of impression and 
invention they are certainly surpassed by the Bible, the 
Iliad, the Divine Comedy, or the works of Shakespeare, 
but by no other creative work of man ever produced. The 
civilisation of whole races is petrified into them. For 
centuries, tens of thousands of men have toiled, thought, 



THE SACREDNESS OF ANCIENT BUILDINGS. 445 

imagined, and poured their souls into the work. It would 
be an education in art to have known by heart that 
glorious facade of Notre Dame, as it once was, when every 
leaf in its foliage, every fold in the drapery, every smile in 
every saint's face was an individual conception of some 
graceful spirit and some deft hand — to have known every 
legend which blazed in ruby, azure, and emerald in the 
countless lights of nave, choir, aisle, and transept, the 
thousands of statues which peopled it within and without, 
the carved stalls and screens, the iron, brass, and silver 
and gold work, the pictures, the frescoes, the tombs, the 
altars, the marbles, the bronzes, the embroideries, the 
ivories, the mosaics. A great national building is the prod- 
uct of a nation, and is the school of a nation. And for 
this reason it should stand in our reverence and love next 
to the great poems of a nation. Next to the Iliad and the 
Trilogy comes the Parthenon. Next to the Divine Comedy 
the Duomo of Florence and its adjuncts. Next to Shakes- 
peare and Milton the Abbey. 

There is thus a peculiar quality in the great historic 
building which marks it off from all other works of art. 
It is in a special sense a living work. It is not so much 
a work as a being. It has an organic life, organic growth ; 
it has a history, an evolution of its own. The Pantheon 
at Rome has gone on living and growing for nearly nine- 
teen centuries, the Castle of St. Angelo for nearly seven- 
teen, the Church of the Holy Wisdom for thirteen, and 
our own Tower for eight centuries ; and all of them are 
still living buildings, and not at all ruins or ' monuments.' 
A building may undergo amazing permutations, like Ha- 
drian's Mausoleum, the baths of Diocletian, or the Church 
bf Justinian, and yet retain its identity and its vital energy. 
A building is indeed rather an institution than a work; 
and, like all institutions, it has its own evolution, corre- 



446 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

sponding- with the social evolution on which it depends, 
and of which it is the symbol. Our Tower, Abbey, Palace 
of Westminster, and Windsor Castle are much more like 
our Monarchy, Parliament, and Judicial system than they 
are like a Madonna by Raphael, or a statue by Pheidias. 
They are not objects to be looked at in museums. They 
are organic lives, social institutions, historic forces. 

Now I hold that all national, historic, monumental 
buildings whatever, however small or humble, partake of 
this character, and ought to have the same veneration and 
sacredness bestowed on them. Every building that has a 
definite public history, and has been dedicated to public 
use, be it church, tower, bridge, gateway, hall, is a national 
institution, is a public possession, and has become sacro- 
sanct, as the Romans said. In the law of Rome, the 
ground in which one who had the right buried a dead 
body became ipso facto, religious ; it ceased to be private 
property, it could not be bought or sold, transferred or 
used. It was for ever dedicated to the dead, and reserved 
from all current usage. So a building, which our dead fore- 
fathers have dedicated to the service of generations, should 
be sacrosanct to the memory of the Past. 

Its size, its beauty, its antiquity, its celebrity, are matters 
of degree not of principle. Essentially it is a national pos- 
session, an irreparable monument, a sacred record, as the 
great Charter and ' Domesday ' are. These records have 
become so pitiably few, their possible value is so incalcu- 
lably great, their unique, inimitable, priceless nature as 
relics is so obvious, that wantonly to destroy one of them 
ought to be treated as a public crime, like smashing the 
Portland Vase, or defacing the Charter and 'Domesday.' 
It is preposterous that an incumbent and his church- 
wardens, a dean and chapter, a mayor and aldermen, a 
warden and benchers, a highway board, or a borough cor- 



THE SACREDNESS OF ANCIENT BUILDINGS. 447 

poration, should be free to deface a national relic, and 
falsify a national record. At the very least, a parish church 
should be as well protected by law as a parish register 
is against wanton defacement and falsification of its con- 
tents. In principle the idea is admitted by the need for a 
'faculty.' But a 'faculty' is become a melancholy form ; 
and no ' faculty ' is needed by the trustees who sell an 
ancient edifice to a builder's speculation, by the highway 
board which carts away a tower or a gate, or ' restores ' and 
!f improves ' a bridge. 

Our glorious Milton said, in a passage as immortal as 
his poems, 'as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book.' 
We may add : ' As good almost kill a good Book as kill 
an ancient Building.' The one is as irrecoverable as the 
other ; it may teach us as much ; it should affect us even 
more. See how the words of that most Biblical of pas- 
sages, which Isaiah himself might have uttered, apply to 
the building as much as to the book. Is not a great his- 
toric abbey 'an immortality rather than a life'? Is not 
the cathedral, too, 'the precious life-blood of a master- 
spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life 
beyond life ' ? Are not these ' restorers ' and ' improvers ' 
of our public monuments the men who 'spill that seasoned 
life of man preserved and stored up in ' the buildings 
which our forefathers raised, in which their lives were 
recorded, and their best work was bestowed ? 

Every work of art has in it ' the precious life-blood of a 
master-spirit ; ' but a work of great architecture and his- 
toric importance has in it the precious life-blood of many 
a master-spirit. And the humblest ancient monument, 
though it be a petty parish church or a market cross, has 
this 'seasoned life of man preserved in it.' Like the pict- 
ure, the statue, the poem, in every work oi* art, the pre- 
cious life-blood of the master-spirit which informs it should 



448 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

make it sacred from sacrilegious hands. But the buildim 
has also that which picture, statue, and poem have not — 
the religio loci. ' The place whereon thou standest is holy 
ground,' may be said of every historic monument. Nay 
more. The ancient building is marked by a filiation oi 
master-spirits. Like the Saxon ' Chronicle,' or the 'Annals 
of Waverley,' it is not a fixed but a current record. It is 
a continuous and moving monument — at once contempo- 
rary like annals, and yet organic like a history. The great 
Charter, ' Domesday,' the Bayeux tapestry, are records of 
given moments in the national life. But in the Abbey and 
its precincts may be seen the works of English hands, con- 
tinuously for a thousand years, generation after generation, 
typical contemporary work. Now, the humblest old parish 
church partakes of this quality of continuous typical work 
for centuries. 

It is monstrous that any man, any body of men, even 
any single generation, should claim the right in the name 
of property, or their office, or their present convenience, to 
destroy in a moment the continuous work of centuries, to 
desecrate the best work of their forefathers, and to rob 
their own descendants of their common birthright. Who 
gave this rare and inimitable value to the ancient building? 
Not they, nor even the first founders of it. Generation 
after generation stamped their mark on it, recorded their 
thoughts in it, poured into it their precious life-blood. It 
is an aggregate product of their race, a social possession 
of all. Whence came the religio loci which casts a halo 
over it ? From no single author, from no set of builders : 
from a long succession of ancestral generations to whom 
it has grown a sacred and national symbol. That precious 
value which time, society, the nation, have given it, is now 
at the mercy of any man, or any board. 

There was a noble doctrine in the old Roman Law, 






THE SACREDNESS OF ANCIENT BUILDINGS. 449 

which may be stated in the words of Gaius : Sanctae 
quoque res, velut muri et portae, quodammodo divini iuris 
stmt. Quod autem divini iuris est, id nullius in bonis est. 
1 Things like city walls, city gates, are sacrosanct ; and, in 
a sense, under divine sanction. But whatever is under 
the divine sanction cannot be the subject of property.' 
That is to say, historic buildings which form part of the 
national records are consecrated by the past and dedicated 
to the future, and are taken out of the arbitrary disposal 
of the present. This principle goes deeper than the mak- 
ing them public property. They are not property at all — 
not to be used, consumed, and adapted at the passing will 
of the day. They are not the chattels of the public. They 
are not public property ; they are consecrated to the nation. 
Each generation is too apt to ask, like a famous peer, 
' May I not do what I please with mine own ? ' No ! 
national possessions are much more than public property. 
They are not ' the own ' of a passing body. They are the 
inheritance which the past is bequeathing to the future, 
and of which we are but trustees. We have no absolute 
rights over them at all ; we have only the duty to preserve 
them. 

So great is the difference between our treatment of old 
pictures, statues, poems, and songs, and our treatment of 
old buildings, that there must be some ground for our 
practice. Certainly there is. Architecture is an art essen- 
tially different from other arts ; and buildings are not 
simple works of art. A building intended to shelter and 
contain men, is, like clothing, food, and firing, a necessity 
of man's material existence, and not, as picture, statue, 
poem, and song are, means of giving grace and joy to 
man's life. Hence every building is first and principally 
a necessity and a material utility, and a work of beauty 
afterwards (if it ever become so at all). The most restless 

2F 



450 



THE CITY IN HISTORY. 



generation does not ' restore ' and ' convert ' either pict- 
ure, statue, poem, or song, as if it were an old gown or 
piece of carpet, simply because they are not conveniences 
but enjoyments. A generation which finds an old build- 
ing inconvenient, is cruelly tempted to ' convert,' ' adapt,' 
extend, or alter it. Again, the building not only occupies 
a surface of ground enormously greater than picture, statu( 
or book, but it occupies immovably for ever one definit( 
spot on the planet ; and in the perpetual changes of social 
life that may easily become an intolerable burden on th< 
living. As the building occupies unalterably a given spot 
which is sometimes a primary necessity for active life, th< 
alternative not seldom presents itself of adaptation or de- 
struction. Thirdly : whilst picture, statue, or book can b< 
preserved almost indefinitely by moderate care, the build- 
ing requires incessant work, sometimes partial renewal of 
its substance, at times elaborate constructive repair to pre- 
vent it from actually tumbling down. 

There are thus a set of grounds, some on one side som< 
on the other, which mark off the building from all other 
works of art. There are three main grounds which tempt 
the living — compel the living — to deal with it from time 
to time. 

First, it is primarily a material utility, and only second- 
arily a work of art. 

Next, it occupies a very large and unalterable spot. 

Lastly, it requires constant labour to uphold it. 

On the other hand, there are three main grounds which 
make the ancient building more sacred than any other 
work of man's art. 

First, it alone has the true religio loci. 

Secondly, it is a national creation, a social work of art, 
in the supreme sense. 

Thirdly, it is a national record, in a way that no other 



THE SACREDNESS OF ANCIENT BUILDINGS. 45 1 

work of art is, because it is almost always both a collective 
and a continuous record. 

Now the action and reaction of these two competing 
sets of impulses undoubtedly makes the protection of our 
ancient buildings a very complex and very difficult prob- 
lem. Both sets are very powerful, both act in varying 
degrees, and the final compromise between the rival sets 
of claims is necessarily the work of much anxious discrimi- 
nation. I venture to maintain that the complication and 
antagonism is such that no hard-and-fast doctrine can be 
laid down. Each case must stand on its merits. Each 
decision must be the laborious reconcilement of conflict- 
ing interests. Our cause has suffered from over-arbitrary 
dogmas and some affectation of contempt for the plain 
necessities of material existence. Every one outside the 
Tuileries laughed at Edmond About, when he told the 
Romans of to-day that the only thing left for them was ' to 
contemplate their ruins.' I wish myself that they had 
contemplated their ruins a little longer, or had allowed us 
to contemplate them, instead of seeking to turn Rome into 
a third-rate Paris. But we shall be laughed at if we ever 
venture to tell the nineteenth century that it must con- 
template its ruins. 

The trust imposed on the century is not to contemplate 
its ruins, but to protect its ancient buildings. Now that 
will be done if the century can learn to feel the true 
sacredness of ancient buildings, if it will admit that the 
building stands on the same footing with picture, statue, 
and poem, that it is unique) inimitable, irreplaceable ; and, 
above all, has its own consecration of place, continuity, 
and record. Admit this first, and then we will consider 
the claims of the present, their convenience, and their 
means. But the burden of proof ought always to be 
pressed imperiously against those whose claim is to de- 



452 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

stroy, to convert, or to extend. When every other means 
fail, when irresistible necessity is proved, it may be a sa( 
duty to remove an ancient building, to add to it, or t( 
incorporate it. But this can never justify what we no 
call ' restoring,' a process which makes it as much like th( 
original as Madame Tussaud's figures are like the states- 
man or general they represent. It can never justify re-dec 
oration — cutting out ancient art-work and replacing it b] 
new work or machine work. It can never justify archaeo- 
logical exercises — I mean the patching on to old buildings 
new pieces of our own invention, which we deliberatel; 
present as fabrications of the antique. These things an 
mere Wardour Street spurious bric-a-brac, no more lik( 
ancient buildings than a schoolboy's iambics are like 
^Eschylus. How often do committees, dean and chaptei 
public offices, and even Parliament itself, treat our great 
national possessions as if they were mere copy books, oi 
the face of which our modern architects were free t< 
practise the art of composing imitations of the ancients. 
Such buildings become much like a Palimpsest mam 
script ; whereon, over a lost tragedy of Sophocles, somi 
wretched monk has scribbled his barbarous prose. Ho^ 
often is the priceless original for ever lost beneath th< 
later stuff ! 

In these remarks I have strictly confined myself to gei 
eral principles : first, because I do not pretend to an] 
special or technical knowledge which would entitle me t( 
criticise particular works, but mainly because I believe oui 
true part to be the maintenance of general principles. Ii 
we fall into discussions of detail we may lose hold of oui 
main strength. We have to raise the discussion into 
higher atmosphere than that of architectural anachronism. 
We cannot pitch our tone too high. It is not architectural 
anachronism which we have to check : it is the safety of 



THE SACREDNESS OF ANCIENT BUILDINGS. 453 

our national records, our national self-respect, the spirit 
of religious reverence that we have to uphold. We have 
to do battle against forgery, irreverence, and desecration. 
Let us raise a voice against the idea that any work of art 
can ever, under any circumstances, be really ' restored ; ' 
against the idea that any ancient art-work can usefully be 
'imitated,' against the idea that ancient monuments are 
a corpus vile whereon to practise antiquarian exercises ; 
against the habit of forging spurious monuments, as the 
monks in the Middle Ages forged spurious charters ; finally, 
against the idea that the convenience of to-day is always to 
outweigh the sacredness of the past. 

Strangely enough, the foes of ancient buildings are too 
often those of their own household. Amongst the worst 
sinners of all are the public departments, corporations, 
and the clergy. The forgers, the destroyers, the muti- 
lators, are too often the official guardians of our old monu- 
ments. One can see why. They are the people who use 
them, to whom they are a necessity and a convenience. 
Naturally they are constantly tempted to give them greater 
practical usefulness, to convert them to modern require- 
ments, and, above all, to make them look smart. We, of 
the public, gaze at an old monument, and then we go home. 
We laymen enjoy an old thirteenth-century church just as 
it is ; but to the official, to the priest, the old hall or the 
old church is the place where his official work is done. 
And a dreadful temptation besets them both to make the 
seat of official work adequate for its office, and appear to 
be up to the level of our time. A natural sentiment ; but 
one false and dangerous. Let us resist it in the name of 
the nation, of the past and of the future. These things 
are sacred by what they have seen and known, by what 
they teach, by what they record. The true solution is 
this. If the present age needs new public offices, bigger 



454 THE CITY IN HISTORY. 

churches, new halls, bridges, gates, let them build new 
ones. If it needs to exercise itself in architectural Latin 
verses, let it do it with new bricks, new stones, and on a 
site of its own choosing. 

I am very far from thinking that this needs Acts of 
Parliament ; but the sacredness of ancient buildings can 
be guaranteed by law. Pictures, statues, poems, are now 
safe from modern Vandals by the force of public opinion 
and true feeling for art and antiquity. The owner of a 
Raphael or a Titian, of a Greek statue, does not need to 
be restrained by an Act of Parliament or an injunction in 
Equity against the temptation to paint over his picture, 
or to add new limbs to his marble. We never hear the 
owner of some princely gallery say to his friends : ' You 
remember what a dingy thing my Veronese used to be, 
how poor in colour my Madonna was, and what a stick the 
Venus looked, with one arm and no nose. Well ! I had 
Rubemup, R.A., down from the Academy, and you see the 
Veronese is as bright as an Etty ; my Raphael might go 
into a new altar at the Oratory, and the Venus is fit for the 
Exhibition ! ' We never hear this ; but we do hear a dean 
or a rector take a party over the ' restored ' cathedral and 
church, and point out how the whole of the stone-work 
has been refaced, how new tracery has been added ' from 
Scott's designs,' and how the Jacobean wood-carving has 
been carted away to Wardour Street. And now the old 
church looks like a new chapel-of-ease at a fashionable sea- 
side place. And the Bishop comes down in lawn and 
blesses the restored and re-consecrated building, and the 
rector gives a garden party, and the county paper brags 
about the liberal subscription lists. What we have to do, is 
to make them all understand that the whole business is 
profanation, ignorance, and vulgarity. 

Ancient buildings certainly cannot be treated as ' ex- 



THE SACREDNESS OF ANCIENT BUILDINGS. 455 

hibits,' to be cased in glass, and displayed in a museum. 
All their powers, their vitality and solemnity would dis- 
appear. They have in most cases to be kept fit for use ; 
and in some rare cases they may have to be completed, 
where the kind of work they need is within our modern 
resources. As to Palladian work that may possibly be 
attempted ; but as to true mediaeval work of the best 
periods, it is absolutely impossible. No fine carving of 
this age can be remotely reproduced or imitated by us 
now in feeling and manner. The current of gradual 
growth for the best mediaeval work has been broken for 
centuries. And we cannot now recover the tradition. 
The archaic nai've grace of a thirteenth-century relief, 
the delicate spring of foliage round capital or spandrel, 
are utterly irrecoverable. There does not exist the hand 
or the eye which can do it. To cut out old art-work 
wholesale, and insert new machine carving, is exactly like 
cutting out a Madonna in an altar-piece, or inserting a 
new head on to a Greek torso. What we have to do is 
to uphold the fabric as best we may, and preserve the 
decoration as Ions; as we can. 

There is need to educate the public, especially the offi- 
cial public, and above all the clergy, to understand all that 
is meant by the sacredness of ancient buildings. The 
business is not so much to discuss solecisms in style and 
blunders in chronology, as to make men feel that our na- 
tional monuments are dedicated by the past to the nation 
for ever, and that each generation but holds them as a 
sacred trust for the future. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

PAL^OGRAPHIC PURISM. 1 

In this age of historical research and archaic realism 
there is growing up a custom which, trivial and plausible 
in its beginnings, may become a nuisance and a scandal 
to literature. It is the custom of re-writing our old 
familiar proper names ; of re-naming places and persons 
which are household words : heirlooms in the English 
language. 

At first sight there seems something to be said for the 
fashion of writing historical names as they were written 
or spoken by contemporary men. To the thoughtless it 
suggests an air of scholarship and superior knowledge, 
gathered at first hand from original sources. Regarded 
as the coat-armour of some giant of historical research, 
there is something piquant in the unfamiliar writing of 
familiar names ; and it is even pleasant to hear a great 
scholar talk of the mighty heroes as if he remembered 
them when a boy, and had often seen their handwriting 
himself. When Mr. Grote chose to write about Kekrops, 
Krete, K/eopatra, and Perikles, we were gratified by the 
peculiarity ; and we only wondered why he retained Cyrus, 
Centaur, Cyprus, and Thucydides. And when Professor 
Freeman taught us to speak of ' Charles the Great,' and 
the Battle of Senlac, we all feel that to talk of Hastings 
would be behind the age. 

But, in these days, the historical schools are growing 

1 Nineteenth Century, Jan. 1886, vol. xix. No. 107. 
456 



PALiEOGRAPHIC PURISM. 457 

in numbers and range. There are no longer merely Attic 
enthusiasts, and Somersaetan champions, but other ages 
and races have thrown up their own historiographers 
and bards. There are ' Middle-English ' as well as ' Old- 
English ' votaries, — and Eliza-ists, and Jacob-ists, and 
Ann-ists. Then there are the French, the German, the 
Italian, the Norse schools, to say nothing of ^Egyptologists, 
Hebraists, Sanscritists, Accadians, Hittites, Moabites, and 
Cuneiform-ists. It becomes a very serious question, what 
will be the end of the English language if all of these are 
to have their way, and are to re-baptize the most familiar 
heroes of our youth and to re-spell the world-famous 
names. 

Each specialist is full of his own era and subject, and 
is quite willing to leave the rest of the historical field to 
the popular style. But there is a higher tribunal beyond; 
and those who care for history as a whole, and for English 
literature in the sum, wonder how far this revival in orthog- 
raphy is to be carried. Let us remember that, both in 
space and in time, there is a vast body of opinion of which 
account must be taken. There is the long succession of 
ages, there is the cultivated world of Europe and America, 
in both of which certain names have become traditional 
and customary. And if every knot of students is to re- 
name at will familiar persons and historic places, historical 
tradition and the custom of the civilised world are wan- 
tonly confused. This true filiation in literary history is 
of far more importance than any alphabetic precision. 

About forty years ago, Mr. Grote began the practice 
of re-setting the old Greek names; but his spelling has 
not commended itself to the world. There seems much 
to be said for Themistokles and Kleon ; but v:hen we were 
asked to write Korkyra and Krete, we felt that the filiation 
of Corcyra and Crete with Latin and the modern tongues 



458 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

was needlessly disturbed. Kirke, Kilikia, Perdikkas, Ka- 
tana, seemed rather harsh and too subversive. And if 
SopJiokles and Sokrates are right, why yFschylus and 
Apneas, in lieu of Aischulos and Aineias? Besides, on 
what ground stop short at a k, leaving the vowels to a 
Latin corruption ? The modern Greeks call the author 
of the Iliad — Omeros ; and the victor of Marathon — 
Meelteeadthes ; and it is highly probable that this is far 
nearer the true pronunciation than are our Homer and 
Miltiades. To be consistent, we shall have to talk of Aias, 
Odusseus, Purrhos, Lukourgos, Thoukudides, Oidipous, Ais- 
chulos, and Kirke, wantonly interrupting the whole Greco- 
Roman filiation. And, whilst we plunge orthography into 
a hopeless welter, we shall stray even farther from the 
true ancient pronunciation. In the result, English litera- 
ture has rejected the change with an instinctive sense that 
it would involve us in quicksands ; and would to no suffi- 
cient purpose break the long tradition which bound Greece 
with Rome, and both with European literary customs. 

Mr. Carlyle would have all true men speak of Friedrich 
and Otto ; of the Kurfiirst of Koln ; of Trier, Prag, Re~ 
gensburg, and Schlesien. But then he is quite willing to 
speak like any common person about Mahomet and the 
Koran, of Clovis and Lothar, of a Duke of Brunswick, and 
of Charles Amadeus of Savoy ; he Anglicises Marseille, 
Preussen, Oesterreich, and Sachsen ; nay, he actually talks 
about ' Charlemagne ' at ' Aix-la-Chapelle.' Tradition and 
English literature are in fact too strong for him, except 
where he wishes to be particularly affectionate or unusu- 
ally impressive. I venture to think that Frederick and 
Cologne are names so deeply embedded in our English 
speech that there is nothing affectionate or impressive in 
the effort to uproot them by foreign words which the mass 
of Englishmen cannot pronounce. It is ridiculous to write, 



PAL^OGRAPHIC PURISM. 



459 



' The Kurfiirst of Koln* It should be, ' Der Kurfiirst von 
Kbln.' But, then, we had better write in German at once. 
Of all the historical schools, that of the Old English 
has been the most revolutionary in its methods, and the 
most exacting in its demands. It began by condemning 
' Charlemagne ' and the ' Anglo-Saxons ' ; and now to use 
either of these familiar old names is to be guilty of some- 
thing which is almost a vulgarism, if not an impertinence. 
We have all learned to speak of Karl and the Old English. 
One by one, the familiar names of English history, the 
names that recur in every family, were recast into some- 
thing grotesque in look and often very hard indeed to 
pronounce. Ecgberht, Cunt, or Knud, the Hzviccas, Ailfth- 
ryth, Hrofesceaster, and Cant-wara-byryg had rather a queer 
look. CJilotachar, Chlodozvig, Hrotland, were not pleasing. 
But when we are asked to give up Alfred, Edward, and 
Edgar, and to speak of yElfred, Eadzueard, and Eadgar, 
'- we began to reflect and to hark back. 

Alfred, Edward, and Edgar are names which for a thou- 
s sand years have filled English homes, and English poetry 
and prose. To rewrite those names is to break the tradi- 
1 tion of history and literature at once. It is no doubt true 
* that the contemporaries of these kings before the conquest 
j did, when writing in the vernacular, spell their names with 
■ the double vowels we are now invited to restore. But is 
that a sufficient reason ? We are not talking their dialect, 
nor do we use their spelling. We write in modern Eng- 
lish, not in old English ; the places they knew, the titles 
they held, the words they used, have to be modernised, if 
Uve wish to be understood ourselves. We cannot preserve 
exactly either the sounds they uttered, or the phrases they 
spoke, or the names of places and offices familiar to them. 
-Why then need we be curious to spell their names as their 
contemporaries did, when we have altered all else — pro- 



460 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

nunciation, orthography, titles, and indeed the entire outer 
form of the language ? The precision for which we vainly 
strive in the spelling of names is after all a makeshift, very 
imperfectly observed by any one, and entirely neglected by 
others. And it has the defect of ignoring a long and sug- 
gestive unity in history, language, and common civilisation. 

It may be true that the contemporaries of ' Edward the 
Elder,' ' Edward the Martyr,' and ' Edward the Confessor' 
spelt the name Eadward, or Eadweard, if they wrote in 
English ; though they did not uniformly do so when they 
wrote it in Latin. But did the ' Edwards ' of Plantagenet 
so spell their name ; or ' Edward ' Tudor ; and will ' Edward 
the Seventh ' so spell his name ? And is Alfred, a name 
to conjure with wherever the English speech is heard, to 
be severed from the great king ? ' Alfred ' is a familiar 
name just as ' king ' is a familiar title ; and it is as pedantic 
to insist on archaic forms of the name as it would be to 
insist on the Saxon form of the office. Since Edward was 
not called by his contemporaries either ' King ' or ' The 
Elder,' what do we gain by such a hybrid phrase as ' King 
Eadweard the Elder ' ? 

It is only a half-hearted realism which writes — ' Ead- 
weard was now King of all England.' It should run: — 
' Eadweard was now Cyning of all Engla-land? It is quite 
correct to write in modern English : — ' King Edward 
marched from London to York.' Here, the proper names 
are all alike adapted to our vernacular. It is an anachro- 
nism, or an anarchaism, to write — ' King Eadweard marched 
from London to York.' It ought to run, if we are bent on 
writing pure old English, ' Eadweard Cyning marched from 
Lundenbyryg to Eoforwic.' That is the real couleur locale ; 
but the general reader could hardly stand many pages of 
this. It is not true in fact that ' JEthelberht lived at Can- 
terbury.' He lived at ' Cant-wara-byryg? Ethelbert, how- 



PALvEOGRAPHIC PURISM. 46 1 

ever, may properly be said to have lived at Canterbury. 
For thirteen centuries Canterbury and York have been 
famous centres of our English life. Except in a parenthe- 
sis, or in a monograph, it would be a nuisance to mention 
them under the cumbrous disguises of ' Eoforwic' and 
' C ant-war a-byryg' ; and for precisely the same reason it is 
a nuisance to read, Alfred, Ecgberht, and Eadweard. 

Where is it going to stop ? Ours is an age of archaeol- 
ogy, revival, and research ; and in no field is research more 
active than in Biblical and other Oriental history. The 
grand familiar names, which have had a charm for us 
from childhood, which have kindled the veneration of a 
long roll of centuries, are all being ' restored ' to satisfy an 
antiquarian purism. We shall soon be invited to call Moses, 
Moshehy as his contemporaries did. Judah should be writ- 
ten Yehuda ; Jacob will be Ydaqob. Our old friend Job 
will appear, clothed and in his right mind, as Iyob. The 
prophet ElijaJi is Eliyahu ; and the prophet Isaiah is now 
metamorphosed into YeshayaJm. Imagine how our de- 
scendants will have to rewrite the lines : — 

< O thou my voice inspire, 
Who touch'd YeshayahiCs hallow'd lips with fire. 1 

And the teacher will have to explain to our grand- 
children that 'Isaiah' is an old vulgarism for Yeshayahu. 
'Jerusalem the Golden ' will appear in the children's hymns 
as Yerushalaim ; and when we speak of the walls of Jericho 
we must sneeze, and say J 'recho. We must say — the 
Proverbs of Shelomoh. But this is not the end of it. The 
very names in men's prayers and devotions must be re- 
formed. Catholics must learn to say their Aves to ' Ma- 
ridm '; and the Protestant must meditate on the ' Blood of 
Jelwshua! 

The historical mind will so have it. It has laid down a 



462 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

rigid canon that proper names should be spelt in the form 
in which their contemporaries wrote them. And if Alfred, 
a name which for so many centuries has been a watchword 
to the English race, is to be ' restored ' into JElfred, because 
he and his so spoke it and wrote it; by the same rule must 
we speak and write of Jehoshua of Nazareth, using the 
same letters in which the Scribes and Pharisees of his day 
recorded the name in official Hebrew. The historical 
mind has said it ; and English literature, custom, the ver- 
nacular speech, poetry, patriotism, and devotion must all 
give way. 

The historical mind has an almost unlimited field ; and 
all the names it records will have to be ' restored' in turn. 
When Mosheh led forth the people of Yehiida to the prom- 
ised Yeriishalaim, he really led them out of Chemi or Kebt- 
kor, not out of 'Egypt,' which is a Greek corruption. And 
Pi-Re and all his host were drowned in the Ydm-Stlph ; for 
of course Red Sea is a mere translation of a late Hellenic 
term. About the central Asian monarchies we fortunately 
have an imperishable and infallible record ; for the great 
king himself inscribed on the eternal rock the names of 
his ancestors and his contemporaries. It is therefore inex- 
cusable in us if we continue to write the names of Oriental 
sovereigns in the clumsy corruptions of ignorant Greeks. 

All history contains no record more authentic than the 
sculptured rock of Behistun, whereon the names of the 
great kings stand graven in characters as unalterable as 
the laws of the Medes and the Persians. 'Darius,' we 
used to write in our ignorant way, ' became King of Persia, 
Susiana, Babylonia, Assyria, Arabia, and Egypt.' Not so 
was it said by them of old time ; not Darius, but Ddraya 
vush ; not king, but Khshdyathiya. So, then, the geography 
lessons of our grandsons will run : — ' Ddrayavush was the 
Khshdyathiya of Pars a, of ' ' Uvaja, of Bdbirush, of Athnrd t 



PALiEOGRAPHIC PURISM. 463 

of Arabdya, of Mudrdya? The entire orthography of the 
Median and Persian Dynasties is now complete and exact. 
It was not 'Cyrus' who founded the Persian Empire, as we 
used to be told : it was Kuraush. The famous king who 
perished in the desert was Kdbujiya, the son of Kuraush. 
And both, beside their own ancestral dominion of Pdrsa, 
ruled over the mighty world-famous city of Bdbirum, and 
the country which lay between the rivers Tigrdm and Ufrd- 
taicvd. Oriental history is at last as simple as an infant's 
ABC. 

And we are now able to record the immortal tale of the 
war between Hellas and Pdrsa with some regard for ortho- 
graphic accuracy. It was Khshaydrshd who mustered the 
millions of Asia in the great struggle which ended in the 
glorious battles of the Hot Gates and of Psyttaleia. His 
great generals, Ariyabhaja and Munduniya, met the Hel- 
lenic hoplites only to court defeat ; and Khshaydrshd, the 
son of Ddryavush, at length withdrew from a land which 
seemed fatal to the entire race of Hakkdmanish, and sought 
rest in his luxurious palace of ' Uvaja. So will run the 
Hellenic histories of the future, in an orthography not 
quite so cacophonous and hieroglyphic as many a page in 
the Making of England. 

Oriental literature is making vast strides, and the authen- 
tic books of the East are daily brought closer and clearer 
to our firesides. And under the influence of this learning 
our very children are coming to be familiar with the new 
dress of the old names. We have grown out of ' Ma- 
homet,' ' Moslem,' ' Koran,' and ' Hegira,' and we are 
careful to write Muhammad, Muslim, Quran, and Hejra. 
For our old friend Mahomet and his Koran various pro- 
fessors contend. Mohammed, Muhammad, Mahmoud, and 
Mehemet have had their day ; and now they are contend- 
ing whether Quran or Qordn best represents the exact 



464 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

cacophony of the native Arabic. And so on through the 
whole series of famous Oriental names : the Zend-Avesta, 
or Ave st a, the UpanisJiads, K'ung Foo-tsze, Tsze-Kung, and 
Tsze-Sze. Scholars, of course, have to tell us all about 
the SukJidvati- Vyuha and the Pragxid-Pdramitd-Hxidaya- 
Siitra ; but the question is, if the rising generation will 
ever be familiarised with these elaborate names. 

It may be doubted if, after all, the exact equivalent of 
these foreign sounds can ever be presented to the English 
reader by any system of phonetic spelling ; all the more 
when this spelling has to call to its aid an elaborate sys- 
tem of circumflex, diphthong, comma, italic, breathing Sh'va 
and Daghesh, most alien to the genius of our language. 
Can a man, unlearned in the respective tongues, pronounce 
K'ung-Foo-tsze, Kitrfiirst of Kb'ln, Quran, with any real 
correctness ? And, if he cannot, is it worth while to upset 
the practice of Europe for centuries, and so vast a concur- 
rence of literature, for the sake of a phonetic orthography 
which is almost picture-writing in its lavish use of symbols : 
and all in pursuit of an accuracy which can never be con- 
sistently adopted ? It may look very learned, but is it 
common sense ? 

It so happens that almost all of the Founders of Relig- 
ions in the East are known to us by certain familiar names, 
which are obviously not the actual names they bore in 
their lifetime ; but which for centuries have passed cur- 
rent in the literary speech of Europe. Confucius, Mencius, 
Buddlia, Zoroaster, Mahomet, Moses, and Jesus are popular 
adaptations of names which the European languages could 
not easily assimilate. As such those names are embedded 
in a thousand works of poetry, history, and criticism, and 
have gathered round them an imposing mass of interest 
and tradition. Is it not almost an outrage to discard these 
old associations and to re-baptize these hoary elders with 



PAL^EOGRAPHIC PURISM. 465 

the newfangled literalism of phonetic pedantry ? ICung- 
Foo-tsze, Mang-tsze, Sdkyamouni, or Siddhdrtha, Zarathus- 
tra or Zerdusht, Muhammad, Mosheh, and Jehoshua, may 
be attempts to imitate the sounds emitted by their contem- 
poraries in Asia, but they are an offence in Europe in the 
nineteenth century, which has long known these mighty 
teachers under names that association has hallowed to our 
ears. If scholarship requires us to sacrifice these old 
familiar names, the necessity applies to all alike. If we 
are henceforth to talk of the Quran of Muhammad, we 
had better give out the first lesson in church from the 
ToratJi of the law-giver Mosheh. 

And, of course, our Roman history will have to be 
'restored.' 'Romans,' 'Etruscans,' ' Tarquin, 1 ' Appius 
Claudius,' and the rest are now the Ramnes, the Ras- 
cnncE, TarcJinaf, and Attus Clauzus. What is to be the 
final issue of that bottomless pit of Roman embryology, 
Dr. Mommsen only knows. All that we now behold is 
a weltering gulf of Ramnes, Tities, Sabelli, Ras, Curites, 
where archaic and ethnologic fumes roll upwards in- 
cessantly, as from an unfathomable crater. Some day 
we shall know what was the true, unpronounced, and 
undivulged name of Rome ; and what is the true pho- 
netic equivalent of 'Romulus' and ' Numa,' of ' Tarquin' 
and 'Brutus' We are even now in a position to speak 
with accuracy of the later history. When they come to 
the Punic wars, our boys and girls in the Board-schools 
of the twentieth century will learn to say : — ' The great 
contest now begins between the Ramnes and the Chna-ites 
of the mighty city of Kereth-HadesJwth ; " An-nee-baal," 
the son of " Am-Melech-Kirjath," proved himself the great- 
est general of antiquity ; but, when he was overwhelmed 
in the final defeat of Naraggara, the city of Queen Jedi- 
diah fell before the irresistible valour of the worshippers 
2G 



466 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

of Diovispater.' And when the young scholars get down 
to the Kym-ry and the Gdltachd, the Vergo-breiths, Ver- 
kenn-kedo-righ, Or-kedo-righ, Cara-dawg, and Heerfilrst, 
may mercy keep their poor little souls ! There are Gdl- 
tachd-ic, and Kym-ric, and Duitisch enthusiasts, as well as 
those of Wessex and Gzvent. I understand there are peo- 
ple even now who want us to call Paris — Loukh-teith. 

A very large proportion of famous men have been 
known in history and commemorated in literature under 
names other than those given to them by their godfathers 
and their godmothers in their baptism, or those that were 
entered in the parish register. Under those names we 
love them, think of them, and feel akin to them. Their 
names are household words : a part of European literature, 
and fill us with kindly and filial feelings. These good old 
names are being steadily supplanted by the alphabetic 
martinets who recall us to the register with all the formal- 
ism of a parish clerk or a Herald from the College. Not 
Moliere, but Poquelin ; not Voltaire, but Aro net ; not George 
Sand, but the Baroness Dudevant ; not Madame de Sevigne, 
but Marie de Rabutin-Chantal. It will soon be a sign of 
ignorance to speak of Tom Jones and Becky Sharp. It 
will be Thomas Summer, Esq., Junior, J. P., and Mrs. 
Joseph Sedley. We shall soon have the Essays of Vis- 
count St. Albans, and the Letters of the Earl of Orford. 

Every reader is familiar with the consummate perfec- 
tion of the Library of the British Museum, the glory of 
British, the envy of foreign scholars. And it gives one 
an awful sense of the growth of this form of purism to 
watch it invading our noble library. Go to the Catalogue 
and turn to Voltaire, and you will read ' Voltaire, see 
Arouet ;' and you will have to trudge to the other end 
of the enormous alphabet. Why Ai'ouet ? What has his 
legal name to do with a writer who put his name, Voltaire, 



PAL^OGRAPHIC PURISM. 467 

on the title-page of thousands of editions, and never on 
one, Arouetf And Mo Here? — is not Mo Here, as a name, 
a part of modern literature ? Mr. Andrew Lang tells a 
most delightful story of a printer, who found in his ' copy ' 
some reference to ' the Scapin of Poquelin.' This hope- 
lessly puzzled him, till a bright idea struck his inventive 
mind, and he printed it — 'the Scapin of M. Coquelin? 

Turn, in the Reference Catalogue of the Museum, to 
Madame de Sevigne', and we read : — Sevigne, Marie de 
Rabutin-Chantal, Marchioness de : — ■ see Rabutin-CJiantal.' 
Why should we 'see' Rabutin-Chantal '? That was her 
maiden-name ; and since she married at eighteen, and her 
works are letters to her daughter, it seems a little odd to 
dub an elderly mamma of rank by her maiden-name. And 
what in the name of precision is ' Marchioness de ' ? It is 
like saying ' Mister Von Goethe.' Once attempt a minute 
heraldic accuracy, and endless confusion results. Why 
need ' Mrs. Nicholls ' appear in the catalogue of the works 
of Currer Bell? And why need George Eliot be entered 
as Marian Evans — a name which the great novelist did 
not bear either in literature or in private life ? 

If we apply the baptismal-certificate theory strictly to 
history, universal confusion will result. Law students will 
have to study the Digest of Upranda. His great general 
will be Beli-Tzar. And by the same rule, the heroic Sala- 
din becomes Salah-ed-deen, or rather, Malek-Nasser-You- 
souf ; Dante becomes Durante Alighieri ; Copernicus is 
Kopernik ; and Columbus becomes Cristobal Colon. If 
baptismal registers are decisive, we must turn ' Erasmus ' 
into Gerhardt Praet ; ' Melancthon' into Schwarzerd ; and 
' Scaliger ' into Bordoni. There is no more reason to 
change Alfred into JElfred and Frederick into Friedrich 
than there would be to transform the great sailor into 
Cristobal Colon, and to talk about the Code of Uprauda. 



468 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

And the dear old painters, almost every one of whom 
has a familiar cognomen which has made the tour of the 
civilised world. What a nuisance it is to read in galleries 
and catalogues, Vecellio, Vannucci, and Cagliari, in lieu of 
our old friends Titian, Perugino, and Veronese ! Raphael 
and Michael Angelo, Masaccio and Tintoretto are no more : 
1 restorers ' in oil are renewing for us the original brilliancy 
of their hues ; whilst ' restorers ' in ink are erasing the 
friendly old nick-names with vera copias of the baptismal 
certificates in their hands. Every chit of an aesthete will 
talk to you about the Cenacolo, or the Sposalizio, of Sanzio ; 
and the Paradiso in the Palazzo Ducale; though these 
words are nearly the limit of his entire Italian vocabulary. 
This new polyglott language of historians and artists is 
becoming, in fact, the speech which is known to the 
curious as maccaronic. It recalls the famous lines of our 
youth : — Trumpeter unus erat, coatum qui scarlet habebat. 

There are two fatal impediments to this attempt at 
reproducing archaic sounds. It is at best but a clumsy 
symbolism of unpronounceable vocables, and it never is, 
and never can be, consistently applied. JEthelthryth, 
Hrofesceaster, and Gruffydd are grotesque agglomerations 
of letters to represent sounds which are not familiar to 
English ears or utterable by English lips. The ' Old-Eng- 
lish ' school pur sang do not hesitate to fill whole sentences 
of what is meant to be modern and popular English with 
these choking words. Professor Freeman used obsolete 
letters in an English sentence. Now, I venture to say 
that English literature requires a work which is intended 
to take a place in it, to be written in the English language. 
In mere glossaries, commentaries, and philological treatises, 
the obsolete letters and obsolete spelling have their place. 
But in literature, the S and ]> are as completely dead as a 
Greek Digamma. 



PALiEOGRAPHIC PURISM. 469 

The most glaring defect of this ' Neo-Saxonism ' is its 
inconsistency. Human nature would revolt if all the 
schools were to adopt the same rule ; but each separate 
school contradicts itself in the same page. It is curious 
that the ' Old-English ' school wantonly modernise the spell- 
ing of names which happen not to be 'Old-English.' 
They first mangle the traditions of English literature by 
twisting household words into an archaic form ; and then, 
in the case of names of the Latin race, they mangle the 
traditions of English and of foreign literature at once, by 
twisting other household words into a modern Anglicised 
form. Mr. Freeman writes in his great history : — ' JElfred 
compared with Lewis IX' Now, here is a double viola- 
tion of the traditions of English literature ; not on the 
same, but on two contradictory principles. ' Saint Louis ' 
is as familiar to us as 'Alfred' In French and in English, 
the name has long been written Louis, which is certainly 
the actual French form. But, as Saint Louis was only 
a Frenchman, and not a West-Saxon, his true name is 
Anglicised into what (in spite of Macaulay) is an obsolete 
form. And Alfred, who is West-Saxon pur sang, is pro- 
moted or ' translated ' into JElfred. If Lewis can be 
shown to be literary English (and there was something to 
be said for that suggestion in Swift's time) one would not 
object. But by that rule, Alfred must stand; for assuredly 
that is literary English. One cannot have it both ways, 
except on the assumption that you intend to spell none but 
your favourite race with archaic precision. 

William the Conqueror, the great subject of Mr. Free- 
man's great book, was king of England for some twenty- 
one years and one of the mightiest kings who ever ruled 
here. In Latin, his contemporaries called him Wiilclmus, 
Wilielmus, or Wilgehnus ; in French, Guillaume, or Wil- 
lame ; in English, Willehn. We have his charter in 



470 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

English to this day ; which runs — ' Willelm Kyng gret 
Willelm Bisceop? Now, if we are obliged to write JElfred, 
and Eadward, why not write the Conqueror in one of the 
forms that his contemporaries used ? But no ; the great 
founder of the new English monarchy never got over the 
original sin of being a Frenchman ; and so he is modern- 
ised like any mere 'Lewis; or 'Henry; or 'Philip' 

In the case of English kings, their wives and relations 
of non-English blood, this school can leave them to the 
vulgar tongue. It is William, Henry, Margaret, Matilda, 
Mary, Stephen, and so on. No doubt it would look very 
odd in an English history to read about our sovereigns 
'Stephen (or Estienne) fighting with the Kaiserinn Ma- 
thildis? But then, what is the good of all this precision if 
it is so grossly inconsistent ? They who insist on talking 
of Elsass and Lothringen write, like the rest of us, Venice 
and Florence. And Mr. Freeman, who is quite content with 
William and Stephen, mere modern Anglicisms, is very par- 
ticular how he writes Sokrates. He happens to be fond of 
West-Saxon annals and Greek philosophers. And so, both 
are recorded in the aboriginal cacophony. 

But there is a far more serious change of name that the 
' Old-English ' school have introduced ; which, if it were 
indefinitely extended, would wantonly confuse historical 
literature. I mean the attempt to alter names which are 
the accepted landmarks of history. It is now thought 
scholarly to write of the ' Battle of Senlac; instead of the 
' Battle of Hastings.' As every one knows, the fight took 
place on the site of Battle Abbey, seven miles from Hast- 
ings ; as so many great battles, those of Tours, Blenheim, 
Cannes, Chaloits, and the like, have been named from 
places not the actual spot of the combat. But since, for 
eight hundred years, the historians of Europe have spoken 
of the ' Battle of Hastings,' it does seem a little pedantic 



PAL.EOGRAPHIC PURISM. 47 1 

to re-name it. ' Hastings ' is the only name given to the 
battle in Willehris Domesc/uy Survey ; it is the only name 
given by the Bayeux Tapestry. ' Exierunt de Hestenga et 
venerunt ad prelium ' is there written — not a word about 
Senlac. The nameless author of the Continuation of 
Wace's Brut says : — 

A Hastinges, sunt encontre 

Li rois e li dux par grant fierte. 

And Guy, Bishop of Amiens from 1058-1076 a.d., wrote 
a poem, ' De Hastings prcelio! One would think all this 
was sufficient authority for us to continue a name recorded 
in history for eight centuries. So far as I know, there is 
no positive evidence that Senlac was a place at all ; the 
sole authority for ' Battle of Senlac ' is Orderic, an English 
monk who left England at the age of nine and lived and 
wrote in Normandy in the next century. Yet, on the 
strength of this authority, the ' Old-English ' school would 
erase from English literature one of our most familiar 
names. 

Battles are seldom named with geographical precision. 
The victors hastily give the first name ; and so it passes 
into current speech. To be accurate, the Battle of Salamis 
should be the Battle of Psyttaleia; the Battle of Camus 
should be named from the Aufidus ; and the 'Battle of 
Zama ' was really fought at Naraggara. Imagine an his- 
torian of the future choosing to re-name the Battle of 
Waterloo from Hougoumont ; because, in the twentieth 
century, some French writer should so describe it. The 
Battle of Trafalgar would have to be described as the sea- 
fight of 'Longitude 6° 7' 5" West, and Latitude 36° 10' 
15" North.' In old days we used to say that 'Charles 
Martel defeated the Saracens in the battle 01 Tours.' So 
wrote Gibbon, Hallam, Milman. Now, we shall have to 
write — ' Karl the Hammer defeated the Yaarabsoi Yemen 



472 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

on the plateau of Sancta Maura! Surely all this is the 
mint and anise of the annals, neglecting the weightier 
matters of the law. 

Has not the • Old-English ' school made rather too much 
that Karl the Great was not a Gaul ; and that ' the Anglo- 
Saxons ' was not the ordinary name- of any English tribe ? 
No one is ever likely to make these blunders again ; but 
to taboo these convenient old names from English litera- 
ture is surely a needless purism. 'Charlemagne ' has been 
spoken of in England ever since, as Wace tells us, Taillefer 
at Hastings died singing ' De Karlemaine e de Rollant; ' 
and in an enormous body of literature for a thousand years 
Charles has been so named. The reason is obvious enough ; 
the great Emperor has become known to us mainly through 
Latin, French, and Old-French sources, Chansons de Gestes } 
and metrical tales in a Romance dialect. That in itself is 
an interesting and important fact in literary history. The 
pure Frank sources, in a Teutonic dialect, are very much 
fewer and less known. The name ' Charlemagne ' is as 
much a part of the English language as is the title, ' Em- 
peror] and it is as little likely to be displaced by any con- 
temporary phonogram as the names of Moses and Jesus. 
Let Germans talk about Kaiser Karl: Englishmen of 
sense will continue to talk of the 'Emperor Charlemagne:' 
a name which is used by Gibbon and Milman, by Hallam 
and Sir H. Maine. 

And so, ' Anglo-Saxon ' is a very convenient term to 
describe the vernacular speech used in England before its 
settlement by the Normans. ' Old-English ' is a vague and 
elastic term. In one sense, the orthography of Dryden or 
of Milton is Old-English ; so is Spenser's, or Chaucer's, or 
the Ancren Riwle. We want a convenient term for the 
speech of Englishmen, before it was affected by the Con- 
quest. Edward the Elder, the first true King of all Eng- 



PAL^OGRAPHIC PURISM. 



473 



land, chose to call himself ' Rex Angul-Saxonum' '; and an 
immense succession of historians and scholars have used 
the term Anglo-Saxon. Is not that enough ? The most 
, learned authorities for this period have used it : men like 
Kemble, Bosworth, Thorpe, and Skeat. So too, Bishop 
( Stubbs, in his magnificent work, systematically employs a 
term which is part of the English language, quite apart 
-from its being current amongst this or that tribe of Engles 
iOX West Saxons. Perhaps, then, we need not be in such 
-a hurry to outlaw a term that was formally adopted for 
'our nation by the first King of all England, and has since 
:been in use in the language. 

; There is something alien to the true historic spirit in 
any race jealousy and ethnological partisanship. History 
,is the unbroken evolution of human civilisation ; and the 
rtrue historians are they who can show us the unity and 
fthe sequence of the vast and complex drama. Theories 
of race are of all speculations the most cloudy and the 
=most misleading. And to few nations are they less appli- 
cable than to England. Our ethnology, our language, our 
history are as mixed and complex as any of which records 
exist. Our nationality is as vigorous and as definite as 
tany in the world ; but it is a geographical and a political 
nationality ; and not a tribal or linguistic nationality. To 
^unwind again the intricate strands which have been wrought 
into our English unity, and to range them in classes is a 
hfutile task. If we exaggerate the power of one particular 
^element of the English race, one source of the English 
people, one side of English institutions, one contributory 
to the English language, we shall find it a poor equipment 
for historical judgment. 

Race prejudices are at all times anti-historic. Professor 

Clifford used to talk about morality as an evolution of the 

r' tribal' conscience. Assuredly confusion is the only pos- 



474 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

sible evolution for a ' tribal ' history. The Carlylese school, 
and the Orientalists, and the Deutsch and Jutish enthu- 
siasts, bid fair to turn our language and its literature into 
an ungainly polyglott. Their pages bristle with Bretwaldas 
and Heretogas, Burhs and Munds, Folk-friths and Tungere- 
fas ; or with Reichs, Kurf firsts, Pfalzes, and Kaisers. All 
this is very well in glossaries, but not in literature. How 
absurd it is to write — ' The Kurfiirst of Kdln? or ' The 
Ealdorman of the Hzviccas ! ' It is as if one wrote — 
' The Due of Broglie was once Minis tre of the Affaires 
Etrangeres '; or that ' Wellington defeated the Empereur 
Napole'on and all his Mare'chaux': just as they do in a 
lady's-maid's high-polite novel. Why are Deutsek and 
Jutish titles to be introduced any more than French or 
Spanish ? In glossaries they are useful ; but histories of 
England should be written in English. And it is pleasant 
to turn to a great book of history, like that of Bishop 
Stubbs ; where, in spite of the temptations and often of 
the necessities of a specialist dealing with a technical 
subject, the text is not needlessly deformed with obsolete, 
grotesque, and foreign words. 

A wide range of ethnology and philology shows us that 
these origins and primitive tongues were themselves the 
issue of others before them, and are only a phase in the 
long evolution of history and language. These Engles, 
and Saxons, and Jutes, these Norse and Welsh, had far dis- 
tant seats, and far earlier modes of speech. They were 
no more 'Autochthones' in the forests of Upper Germany 
than they were in Wessex and Caint. Their speech has 
been traced back to Aryan roots current in Asia. And 
there, by the latest glimmerings of ethnographic science, 
we lose all these Cymric, and British, and Teutonic tribes 
in some (not definable) affinity, in some (not ascertainable) 
district of Central Asia, with some (not recoverable) com- 



PAL^OGRAPHIC PURISM. 475 

mon tongue of their own. So that these war cries about 
the White Horse, and Engles, and Jutes, turn out to mean 
simply that a very industrious school of historians choose 
to direct their attention to one particular phase of a move- 
ment which is in perpetual flux ; and which, in time, in 
place, and in speech, can be traced back to very distant 
embryos in the infinite night of conjecture. 

It is treason to our country and to scientific history to 
write, as Mr. Greene ventured to do in his fine and elabo- 
rate Making of England, that ' with the landing of Hen- 
gest English history begins.' The history of England is 
something more than the tribal records of the Engles. 
The history of England began with the first authentic 
story of organised communities of men living in this 
island : and that most certainly existed since Caesar nar- 
rated his own campaigns in Britain. The history of 
England, or the history of France, is the consecutive 
record of the political communities of men dwelling in the 
lands now called England and France. The really great 
problem for history is the assimilation of race and the 
co-operation of alien forces. And so, too, the note of true 
literature lies in a loyal submission to the traditions of 
our composite tongue, and respect for an instrument 
which is hallowed by the custom of so many masterpieces. 
Loyal respect for that glorious speech would teach us to 
be slow how we desecrate its familiar names with brand- 
new archaisms ; how we ruffle its easy flow with alien 
cacophonies and solecisms, and deform its familiar topog- 
raphy with hieroglyphic phonograms. 

In passing from the literary iconoclasm of the ' Old- 
English ' school I would venture to add that no man is a 
more humble admirer than I am of the vast learning and 
the marvellous powers of research belonging to the author 
of the Norman Conquest. Nor can any man more deeply 



476 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

deplore another disaster which our literature has sus- 
tained in the premature loss of the author of A Short 
History of England: one who in his brief time has shown 
such historical imagination and such literary power, that 
it is impossible to mention him without a pang of regret. 
Si, qua fata asp era rumpas, Tu Marcellns eris. 

We may add a few words about various names which 
under the influence of a most mistaken literalism are 
being wantonly transformed. Persons who are anxious 
to appear well informed seem almost ashamed to spell 
familiar names as their grandfathers did. What is the 
meaning of 'Vergil'? As every one knows, the best 
mss. in the last lines of the fourth Georgic spell Vergil- 
inm; and accordingly some scholars think fit so to alter 
the poet's name. Be it so. But 'VergiV is not Latin, 
any more than 'Homer' is Greek. Virgil is a familiar 
word, rooted deep in English literature and thought. To 
uproot it, and the like of it, would be to turn the English 
language into a quagmire. We shall be asked next to 
write ' Omer? If all our familiar names are to be recast, 
as new manuscripts or autographs turn up, none of these 
venerable names will remain to us. We shall have to 
talk of the epic poets, Omeros and Durante. Again, if 
autographs are conclusive, we shall have to write of 
Marie, Quean of Scots, and Lady Jane Duddley ; of the 
statesmen, Cecyll and WalsyngJiam ; of 'Lord Nelson and 
Bronte,' of the great Marleborough, of the poet Noel-Byron, 
of Sir Kenelme Digby, Sir Philip Sidnei, and Arbella 
Seymaure ; of Bloody ' MaryeJ and Robert Duddley, Earl 
of Leycester. All of these queer forms are the actual 
names signed by these personages in extant autographs. 
The next step will be to write about these personages in 
the contemporary style ; and archaic orthography will pass 
from proper names to the entire text. 



PAL^OGRAPHIC PURISM. 477 

The objection to insisting on strict contemporary orthog- 
raphy is this : the spelling of the family name was continu- 
ally changing, and to write it in a dozen ways is to break 
the tradition of the family. If we call Burleigh ' Cecyli; 
as he wrote it himself, we lose the tradition of the family 
of the late Prime Minister. If we call the author of the 
Arcadia Sidnei, as he wrote it himself, we detach him from 
the Sidneys. The Percys, Howards, Harcourts, Douglas, 
Wyatts, Lindsays, and Montgomerys of our feudal history 
will appear as the Perses, H awards y Harecourts, Dowglas, 
Wiats, Lyndesays, and Monggomberrys. If we read Chevy 
Chase in the pure palaeography, we shall find how the 
' Donghete dogglas ' spoke to the i lord perse '; and how 
there died in the fray, Wetharryngton, ser hewe the mong- 
gomberry, ser datiy Iwdale, and ser char Is a murre. 

And then how the purists do drag us up and down with 
their orthographic edicts ! Just as the Old-English school 
is restoring the diphthong on every side, the classical 
reformers are purging it out like an unclean thing. We 
need not care much whether we write of Caesar or 'Caesar.' 
But just as we have learned to write Caesar and Vergil's 
Aeneid, in place of our old friends, we are taught to write 
Bceda and Alfred, for 'Bede' and ' Alfred.' The ' Old- 
English ' school revel in diphthongs, even in the Latin 
names ; your classical purist would expire if he were called 
upon to write 'Caesar' or 'Pompey.' Farewell to the 
delightful gossipy style of the last century about ' Tully,' 
and ' Maro,' and ' Livy ' ! They knew quite as much about 
them at heart as we do to-day with all our Medicean manu- 
scripts and our 'sic. Cod. Vat! 

The way in which it all works into ordinary books is 
this. The compilers of dictionaries, catalogues, compen- 
diums, vade-mecums, and the like, the writers of newspaper 
paragraphs and literary announcements, are not only a 



478 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

most industrious, but a most accurate and most alert, race 
of men. They are ever on the watch for the latest dis- 
covery, and the last special work on every conceivable 
topic. It is not to be expected that they can go very 
deeply into each matter themselves ; but the latest spelling, 
the last new commentary, or the newest literary ' find,' is 
eminently the field of their peculiar work. To them, the 
man who has abolished the ' Battle of Hastings ' as a popu- 
lar error must know more about history than any man 
living ; and so, the man who writes Shakspere has appar- 
ently the latest lights on the Elizabethan drama. Thus 
it comes that our ordinary style is rapidly infiltrated 
with Karls and ALlfreds, and Senlacs, Qurdns, and Shak- 
speres ; till it becomes at last almost a kind of pedantry 
to object. 

How foolish is the attempt to re-name Shakespeare him- 
self by the aid of manuscripts ! As every one knows, the 
name of Shakespeare may be found in contemporary docu- 
ments in almost every possible form of the letters. Some 
of these are — Shakespeare, Schakespere, ScJiakespeire, 
SJiakespeyre, Chaesper, Shakspere, Shakespere, Shakespeere, 
Shackspear, Shakeseper, Shackespeare, Saxspere, SJiack- 
speere, Shaxeper, Shaxpere, Shaxper, Shaxpeer, Shaxspere, 
Shakspeare, SJiakttspeare, Shakesper, Shaksper, Shackspere, 
Shakspyr, Shakspear, Shakspeyr, Shackspeare, Shaxkspere, 
Shackspeyr, Shaxpeare, Shakesphere, Sackesper, Shaekspare, 
Shakspeere, Shaxpeare, Shakxsper, Shaxpere, Shakspeyr, 
Shagspur, and Shaxberd. Here are forty of the contem- 
porary modes of spelling his name. Now are the facsimi- 
lists prepared to call the great poet of the world by 
whichever of these, as in a parish election, commands 
the majority of the written documents ? So that, if we 
have at last to call our immortal bard, Chaesper, or Shax- 
per, or Shagspur, we must accept it ; and in the mean- 



PAL^EOGRAPHIC PURISM. 479 

time leave his name as variable as ever his contemporaries 
did ? 

Shakespeare no doubt, like most persons in that age, 
wrote his name in various ways. The extant autographs 
differ ; and the signature which is thought to be Shak- 
spere, has been simply misread, and plainly shows another 
letter. The vast preponderance of evidence establishes 
that in the printed literature of his time his name was 
written — Shakespeare. In his first poems, Lucrece and 
Venus and Adonis, he placed SJiakespeare on the title-page. 
So it stands on the folios of 1623 and 1632. So also it 
was spelled by his friends in their published works ; by 
Ben Jonson, by Bancroft, Barnefield, Willobie, Freeman, 
Davies, Meres, and Weever. It is certain that his name 
was pronounced Shake-spear (i.e., as 'Shake* and 'Spear' 
were then pronounced) by his literary friends in London. 
This is shown by the punning lines of Ben Jonson, by 
those of Bancroft and others ; by Greene's allusion to him 
as the only Shake-scene ; and, lastly, by the canting heraldry 
of the arms granted to his father in 1599: — 'In a field of 
gould upon a bend sables a speare of the first : with crest 
a ffalcon supporting a speare! 

It is very probable that this grant of arms, about which 
Dethick, the Garter-King, was blamed and had to defend 
himself, practically settled the pronunciation as well as the 
spelling. It is probable that hitherto the family name had 
not been so spelt or so pronounced in Warwickshire. It 
is possible that Shakespeare was almost a nick-name, or a 
familiar stage-name ; but, like Erasmus, Melancthon, or 
Voltaire, he who bore it carried it so into literature. For 
some centuries downwards, the immense concurrence of 
writers, English and foreign, has so accepted the name. 
A great majority of the commentators have adopted the 
same form : Dyce, Collier, Halliwell-Phillipps, Staunton, 



480 the meaning of history. 

W. G. Clark. No one of the principal editors of the poet 
writes his name ' Shakspere! But so Mr. Furnivall decrees 
it shall be. 

One would have thought so great a preponderance of 
literary practice need not be disturbed by one or two 
signatures in manuscript, even if they were perfectly dis- 
tinct and quite uniform. Yet, such is the march of palaeo- 
graphic purism, that our great poet is in imminent danger 
of being translated into SJiakspere, and ultimately Shaxper. 
The Museum Catalogue devotes six volumes to the poet 
and his editors. All these thousands of works are entered 
under ' Shakspere' ; though in about 95 per cent, of them 
the name is not so written. The editions of Dyce, Collier, 
Staunton, Halliwell-Phillipps, and Clark, which have Shake- 
speare on their title-pages, are lettered in the binding Shak- 
spere. Nay, the facsimile of the folio of 1623, where we 
not only read Shakespeare on the title-page, but laudatory 
verses addressed to ' Shakespeare' {sic) is actually lettered 
in the binding (facsimile as it purports to be), Shakspere. 
We shall certainly end with ' Shaxper.' 

The claim of the palaeographists to re-name great men 
rests on a confusion of ideas. '■ Shakespeare ' is a word 
in the English language, just as 'Tragedy ' is ; and it is in 
vain to ask us, in the name of etyniography, to turn that 
name into Shakspere, as it would be to ask us, in the name 
of etymology, to turn ' Tragedy ' into Goat-song. The point 
is not, how did the poet spell his name — that is an anti- 
quarian, not a literary matter, any more than how Homer 
or Moses spelled their names. Homer and Moses, as we 
know, could not possibly spell their names : since alpha- 
bets were not invented. And, as in a thousand cases, the 
exact orthography is not possible : the matter which con- 
cerns the public is the form of a name which has obtained 
currency in literature. When once any name has obtained 



PAL^OGRAPHIC PURISM. 481 

that currency in a fixed and settled literature, it is more 
than pedantry to disturb it : it is an outrage on our lan- 
guage. And it is a serious hindrance to popular education 
to be ever unsettling familiar names. 

If we are to re-edit Shakespeare's name by strict revival 
of contemporary forms, we ought to alter the names of his 
plays as well. There is reason to think that Macbeth was 
Mcslbcethe. The twentieth century will go to see Shaxpers 
Mcelbcethe performed on the stage. And so they will have 
to go through the cycle of the immortal plays. Hamlet 
was variously written Hamblet, Amleth, Hamnet, Hamle, 
and Hamlett ; and every ' revival ' of Hamlet will be given 
in a new name. Leir s daughters were properly Gonorill, 
Ragan, and Cordila. If Shakspere's own orthography is 
decisive, we must talk about the Midsummer Nighfs 
Dreame, and Twelffe-NigJit, Henry Fift, and Cleopater, for 
so he wrote the titles himself. Under the exasperating 
revivalism of the palaeographic school all things are possi- 
ble ; and, in the next century, it will be the fashion to say 
that 'the master-creations of Shaxper are undoubtedly Cor- 
dila, Hamblet, and Maelbaethe.' Goats and monkeys ! can 
we bear this ? 

All this revivalism rests upon the delusion, that bits of 
ancient things can be crammed into the living organism 
of modern civilisation. Any rational historical culture 
must be subordinate to organic evolution ; lumps of the 
past are not to be inserted into our ribs, or thrust down 
our throats like a horse drench. A brick or two from our 
father's houses will not really testify how they built their 
homes ; and exhuming the skeletons of their buried words 
may prove but a source of offence to the living. An actor 
who had undertaken the character of Othello once blacked 
himself all over the body, in order to enter more fully into 
the spirit of the part ; but it is not recorded that he sur- 

2H 



482 THE MEANING OF HISTORY. 

passed either Edmund Kean or Salvini. So we are told 
that there exists a company of enthusiastic Ann-ists, who 
meet in the dress of Addison and Pope, in boudoirs which 
Stella and Vanessa would recognise, and read copies of 
the old Spectator, reprinted in contemporary type. 

In days when we are warned that the true feeling for 
high art is only to be acquired by the wearing of ruffles 
and velvet breeches, we shall soon be expected, when we 
go to a lecture on the early Britons, to stain our bodies all 
over with woad, in order to realise the sensations of our 
ancient ' forbears ' ; and no one will pass in English his- 
tory till he can sputter out all the guttural names in the 
Saxon Chronicle. Palaeography should keep to its place, 
in commentaries, glossaries, monographs, and the like. 
In English literature, the literary name of the greatest 
ruler of the West is Charlemagne ; the literary name of 
the most perfect of kings is Alfred ; and the literary name 
of the greatest of poets is Shakespeare. The entire world, 
and not England alone, has settled all this for centuries. 



THE END. 



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